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ATLANTIC CITY —  Hard Rock International's boss says his company will wait years if need be to open a casino in the northern New Jersey Meadowlands.

CEO Jim Allen told The Associated Press on Tuesday he's prepared to wait two years or even much longer to build the casino his Florida-based company wants to add to the Meadowlands Racetrack in East Rutherford, where the NFL's Jets and Giants play home games.

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New Jersey voters last week overwhelmingly rejected a ballot question about authorizing two new casinos in counties near New York City. With all but a handful of votes counted the measure had been rejected by nearly 80 percent of voters.

Allen, speaking before a press conference marking the 20th anniversary of the Hard Rock Cafe in Atlantic City, said his company is prepared to be patient when it comes to a casino he clearly expects to be approved.

"We're committed to the state of New Jersey for the long term," said Allen, who has a long background in the Atlantic City casino industry dating to 1979, the year after New Jersey's first casino opened, and who now runs the iconic Hard Rock chain of cafes, casinos and hotels for the Seminole Indian tribe of Florida.

Meadowlands operator Jeff Gural said he's prepared to wait as long as six years for a casino at his track. Allen said Tuesday that Hard Rock will wait that long if necessary.

Independent analysts and some casino industry officials have said a casino at the Meadowlands could be among the most successful casinos in the nation, at least for a few years until New York state allows casinos in Manhattan.

Because the referendum was defeated, it cannot be returned to the ballot for at least two years.

Allen said he could support an alternative plan advanced by state Assemblyman Ralph Caputo, a north Jersey Democrat, to authorize slot machines at the state's racetracks by reclassifying them as "video lottery terminals" under the auspices of the already legal state Lottery.

But that plan relies on a decades-old legal opinion that such a move would be permissible and would not need statewide voter approval, something even Caputo acknowledges might not be the case now.

Allen said it would depend on the way such a measure was worded, but he said Hard Rock supports any way to legally bring casino gambling to the Meadowlands.

"Certainly we are 100 percent receptive to expanding and creating these jobs here in the state of New Jersey," he said.