A few readers have asked about my thoughts on the latest racino/casino plans announced for the former Concord Hotel site in Kiamesha Lake. Well, you almost need a Racing Form to keep track of the players and handicap this race. Right now, if I were a betting man, I'd keep my two bucks in my pocket.
Some background. Louis Capelli bought the old Concord Hotel site in 2000 at a bankruptcy auction for $10.5 million. Over the next few years, a number of different plans were unveiled to much fanfare, with different tribal and casino partners, culminating in plans for a $1 billion "Entertainment City" in conjunction with Empire Resorts, onwer of the Monticello Raceway. Demolition and infrastructure work started at the Concord site, but new construction never got off the ground — despite repeated announcements from Louis Capelli that construction was imminent.
The project hit two big snags. The first was the economic crisis; funding for risky, large scale projects like the Concord just dried up. In Capelli's defense, he's a mastermind at lining up financing, but the money just wasn't there. And a cornerstone of the project was the hope that the change in administration in Washington would shift policy to permit for off-reservation casinos — which is still largely unchanged from the Bush years.
The Concord project, as envisioned by Capellli, went down in flames, with foreclosure actions and lawsuits. In the end, the Concord property ended up in two hands — and this is where it get's interesting. The investor Entertainment Properties Trust got about 1,500 acres of the total 1,700 acre property (including the golf courses), while Capelli managed to maintain 116 acres that comprised the actual hotel site.
Entertainment Properties Trust — now owner of the 1,500 acres — has teamed up with Empire Resorts to explore development of the site, which, according to resports, may include moving the Monticello Raceway to the Concord site.
Re-enter Capelli. In May, he announces that he's struck a deal with Mohegan Sun to develop the 116 acre site, including a new harness racing track, Concord Downs. (In New York state, a racino with video lottery terminals has to be attached to a race track, thus the plans for the new harness track.) The head of the NY racing commission has indicated it will act favorably on an application for the harness track, but the Catch-22 is that the track has to be built first. The Capelli-led group announced that they plan to secure financing by the middle of this month, start construction at the end of June or beginning of July and be open for business in 2013.
The response to that here? A lot of collective eye rolling. I don't think a London bookmaker would even take bets on whether a Capelli-announced start date would be met at this point. This may be the group that pulls it together, and I certainly wish them well. But there have just been too many announcements from that camp that never panned out for many people up here to get very excited about it.
And then there's Empire Resorts and Entertainment Properties Trust. They're unlikely to sit back and idly watch all this go down (or rather up.) And they own a lot of land, with racino/casino dreams of their own. And that's where we can end up with a big bucks brawl, seeing more action in the courts than construction on any part of the Concord property this summer.
So when readers of this blog ask me about my thoughts on all the new casino plans here, my response is "Whatever. I'll believe it when I see it" — and then I return to something more productive than getting excited about another casino scheme, like pruning my bushes.
My wife and I have been second vacation home residents of a home in Ferndale for the past 21 years. We've had our home (as so many others) up for sale for the past five years (with selling price dropping eacfh year). What do you think would be the effect of the real estate market and the economy in Sullivan county should we be lucky enough to see a racino or multiple casinos constructed and operational?
Posted by: Martin Kupferberg | June 19, 2011 at 01:38 AM
Martin, I don't think the impact is clear. If casinos do come, the greatest impact will likely be in workforce housing, in the Monticello and Rock Hill areas, from more modest housing for line workers to more upmarket housing for managers. This could be really good news for South Fallsburg and Monticello, both of which have had a tough time over the past few years. But the wider impact is tougher to predict. Younger, hipper buyers tend to gravitate to the more rural parts of the county in the western and northern townships — and that's been the bread and butter of the second home market for the past few years. It will be interesting to see if a casino will attract a different demographic, drawn to more 'action' — casinos, restaurants, golf courses, spas and maybe a water park. If it does bring a new demographic, that could be great for the eastern part of the county that took a back seat to the 'back to the land, organic gardening, cute farmhouse' that's been a boon to the more rural townships over the past decade. I'm a believer that Sullivan County is plenty big to encompass both, and they never have to rub elbows except on the lawn at Bethel Woods.
Posted by: David Knudsen | June 21, 2011 at 06:05 PM