Bally’s came up no dice last week when the City Council voted down land use changes that would have helped the corporation build a casino in Ferry Point.
The vote put an end to the controversial project, which has faced intense opposition from the community and equally intense lobbying from the big-moneyed interests behind it.
Yet some of my Bronx City Council colleagues are imploring the mayor to step in and veto the Council’s action in the midst of summer recess, essentially providing the body no opportunity to respond.
The mayor should respect the will of the Council, and the residents of our district, and keep his ace in the hole.
It’s a bad look, to say the least, for the chairs of the Council’s land use and zoning committees to plead with the mayor to take the extraordinary step of invalidating a land use action that was overwhelmingly supported by their colleagues — especially at a time when the mayor, through his Charter Revision Commission, is actively trying to usurp the Council’s power over land use matters. Not to mention, this completely disregards member deference.
You can count on one hand the times the Council has overridden member deference, or a mayor has issued a veto on land use items in the past 50 years. But those rare measures were for projects that offered housing, a public school and a potentially lifesaving medical research facility — not slot machines and craps tables.
Yet these members say this dubious move would be justified because a casino is “bigger than one neighborhood,” a “tax revenue–generating” magic bullet for the Bronx.
Odds are they are very wrong.
Just look at Chicago, which bet big on a Bally’s casino to help ease its fiscal woes but has so far turned up a losing hand. In 2023, tax revenue from Bally’s reached a meager $3 million, just 25% of what officials had projected, according to Chicago’s chief financial officer. In 2024, casino taxes totaled just 47% of what officials expected. The revenue has been so bad, credit agency Fitch Ratings recently downgraded Bally’s Corp. with a negative outlook due to serious concerns about the Chicago casino development.
Building casinos in New York has similarly been a crapshoot. The state comptroller’s 2020 annual report found tax collections on all four upstate casinos fell way short of original projections. Even by 2022, only one had reached its forecast.
Perhaps worse than flagging revenues, studies have found casinos cannibalize local businesses. That’s because they are designed to keep customers in and keep them playing. So visitors to the Bronx would be putting their money into Bally’s slots, not our mom-and-pops.
My Bronx colleagues also claim the Council’s action has “shut the door” to thousands of union jobs and $625 million in “community benefits.”
First, those jobs are not lost — they will still go to three projects vying for casino licenses from the state Gaming Commission, which include nearby proposals.
Second, most of Bally’s so-called community benefit dollars would not benefit the community, but rather address the big problems the project would create: a highway overpass and infrastructure improvements for the massive influx of traffic and congestion; park improvements to help offset 19-acres of public parkland the corporation would be taking from the community; and a satellite police precinct to deal with the uptick in crime that often accompanies a casino.
No, the Bronx does not “need” Bally’s casino. What the Bronx needs is more senior housing, better transit access and health care facilities, more open space and parks.
That is why I fought to ensure the Bronx Metro-North rezoning will bring more than 10,000 good-paying construction and hospital jobs, more than $200 million in capital and infrastructure funding, almost 4,000 units of housing in my district alone, and more than 500 homeownership opportunities to promote generational wealth and financial stability in our borough.
That is why I have been in discussions with Montefiore to bring a multi-billion-dollar, state-of-the-art hospital, with cutting-edge medical care and high-paying medical careers to the district. That is why I pour millions of taxpayer dollars each year back into schools, parks, local businesses associations and community organizations to help our district thrive and grow.
When it comes to gambling on projects that benefit my district, and my borough, my chips are all in. But Bally’s is a bad bet for the Bronx.
Marmorato is a City Council member representing the 13th District, which includes Ferry Point and Throggs Neck in the Bronx.
