{"id":243173,"date":"2025-09-21T05:25:45","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T05:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/243173\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T05:25:45","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T05:25:45","slug":"inside-the-war-over-jay-zs-new-york-city-casino","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/243173\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the War Over Jay-Z\u2019s New York City Casino"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tens of billions of dollars, thousands of jobs, and quite possibly the fate of New York\u2019s<\/a> most iconic industry and most awful tourist trap were all at stake. But the closing days of a yearslong fight over whether to build a casino in Times Square seemed to revolve around one man: Jay-Z.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

You could see it over the summer, when Al Sharpton<\/strong> headlined a rally just south of Times Square\u2019s iconic red steps. \u201cSay yes time! Yes time! In Times Square! Times Square! Jay-Z! Jay-Z!\u201d he shouted. You could see it last week at the Broadhurst Theatre on 44th Street, the site of a final public hearing on the casino before a do-or-die vote. \u201cFor the first time,\u201d promised Marc Holliday<\/a>,<\/strong> the CEO of the city\u2019s largest commercial real estate firm, \u201ceveryone has a seat at this table, with Jay-Z at the head.\u201d<\/p>\n

HOV, through his entertainment firm, Roc Nation, poured \u201chundreds of millions\u201d into a stake in the project, according to its CEO, Desiree Perez.<\/strong> Then Roc Nation joined Holliday\u2019s company, SL Green, and Caesars Entertainment in spending millions and millions more promoting it to sometimes-wary lawmakers, municipal bureaucrats, and the public at large. The goal: secure one of three licenses for casinos in the New York City area.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, everything fell apart. Before a bid could even be considered by the state\u2019s regulators, it had to capture four of six votes from a community advisory committee, all appointed by local politicians. That vote finally happened after years of buildup, and the committee decisively rejected the bid\u2014four to two against Jay-Z\u2019s big play in Times Square. Despite support from the mayor and the governor of New York, the Times Square casino is dead.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a massive loss for all of the partners in the Times Square casino project\u2014including its most famous one, whose up-from-nothing, keep-close-to-the-streets story was at the center of the closing argument. \u201cWe from these neighborhoods,\u201d Jay-Z told the advisory committee members as they sat across a conference table over the summer. \u201cWe hear a lot of talk about community. We are the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not saying, \u2018Give it to us because we happen to be Black, Hispanic, and female,\u2019\u201d Perez tells me, right before the big vote. \u201cNo, that\u2019s not what we\u2019re saying. Of course not. But we are saying, \u2018Don\u2019t ignore who we are, what we stand for, where we come from, where we\u2019ve been, everything that we\u2019ve accomplished. Please don\u2019t ignore that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

And as for the forces opposing the casino? The theater types, who worry that tourists might gamble away their Broadway<\/a> money? Or that a casino might poison Broadway\u2019s delicate ecosystem? Create traffic armageddon in midtown? Well, to borrow a phrase from a different rapper: not like us. Jay-Z\u2019s allies argued that opponents weren\u2019t just a bunch of finger-wagging hall monitors standing in the way of thousands of Black and brown people getting casino jobs. They were, according to Sharpton, \u201coligarchs.\u201d It was an ironic choice of words, given Jay-Z\u2019s billionaire<\/a> status.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tens of billions of dollars, thousands of jobs, and quite possibly the fate of New York\u2019s most iconic…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":243174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,14107,405,403,50,5226,5225,5228,5227,129708,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,1940],"class_list":{"0":"post-243173","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-hollywood","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkcity","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-splitscreenimageleftinset","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa","24":"tag-web"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115240627231711882","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}