Despite protests – and counter-protests – the Nassau County Planning Commission voted unanimously on Thursday to hand the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale over to the Las Vegas Sands casino company.
The lease was proposed on June 20 and gives Sands control of the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum and its surrounding land for 42 years. Sands wants to build a casino on the property, a move supported by both Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman and his allies in the Republican-majority county legislature, which voted 17-1 to approve a casino last year.
“The casino has no implication on what we’re doing today,” said Grant Newburger, director of communications of the AFL-CIO-affiliated Building and Construction Trades Council of Nassau and Suffolk counties, which celebrated the news. “Sands is the employer who is going to keep paying for our people that are unionized, local Long Islanders. This is the entity that is trying to take over the Coliseum right now. We all live on Long Island. And we just want to feed our families and I want to make sure they can go to work tomorrow.”
The New York State Gaming Commission is expected to decide next year which entities will be awarded four downstate casino licenses.
Labor activists with green signs reading “Say Yes to Sands” gathered at the Theodore Roosevelt Executive and Legislative Building in Mineola to show support for the county moving forward with the plan in anticipation of Las Vegas Sands potentially winning a state contract.
Anti-casino advocates rallied outside of the building as well, stressing the need to consider the long term implications of building a casino in Nassau.
“The change in the culture [with a casino] is going to be profound,” George Krug, Garden City resident and member of the Say No To The Casino Civic Association, told the Press. “What this does to parents looking at Hofstra as a prospective school for their kids, when they’re driving up, to check out the school that they might want to send their son or daughter to and they see there’s a Las Vegas style casino right next door literally across the street, and they learned that it’s the second largest casino in the country bigger than any casino in Las Vegas, they’re going to be looking at other options, right? I firmly believe that years from now, if this casino gets built, people are going to think of Nassau County in terms of before the casino and after the casino.”
Since the New York Islanders left the Nassau Coliseum in 2015 – playing at Barclays Center in Brooklyn for a few years with a brief return to the coliseum before eventually settling at UBS Arena in Elmont – questions have lingered about the coliseum’s status, and many plans for its future have fallen through over the years.
“Before Bruce Blakeman became county executive there was the Rechler plan for mixed use,” Krug added. “This one was gaining traction and gaining approval and had widespread support, until County Executive Blakeman brought everything to a halt.”
The Village of Garden City voted unanimously in 2023 to condemn any plans for the casino. Village Mayor Mary Carter Flanagan spoke at the rally, echoing Krug’s sentiment on the effects it could have.
“The serious security issues that surround casinos are well known, including DWI, prostitution, drugs, sex trafficking, compulsive gambling, and moreover, a severely negative impact on our village roadways, which are already overburdened with traffic,” Flanagan said. “The [Village] Board urges the Nassau County Legislature and the Nassau County IDA to actively seek out development ideas which will enhance our communities.”
Blakeman did not immediately return a request for comment on the story.
