Mets Made $100 Million Pitch In 2011 To Put A Casino Next To CitiField

ESPN – The owners of the New York Mets reportedly wanted to take a gamble on owning a casino next to Citi Field, the home of their major league club. Sterling Equities, the real-estate company operated by Fred Wilpon and family, who also owns the Mets, pitched a casino adjacent to the major league stadium in September 2011 and offered the City of New York $100 million to acquire 62 acres for the site, the New York Post reported Tuesday. Sterling Equities even lined up the Shinnecock Indian nation to operate the casino, but a live-dealer casino is not legal in New York except on tribal lands, making it infeasible at this point, according to the report. Sterling Equities was instead given 23 of the 62 requested acres in June to construct a $3 billion entertainment complex — minus the casino. “The submission that included a gaming use was quickly dismissed as unviable,” a spokesman with the city’s Economic Development Corp. told the Post. “A different plan is now moving through the approvals process for a project that will create a dynamic new destination, hundreds of units of affordable housing, and thousands of jobs.” The pitch for the casino was being delivered during the height of the Mets owners’ financial troubles related to Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. The owners since have favorably settled a lawsuit that sought to recover funds from them for allegedly profiting from the Ponzi scheme. The Mets declined to comment on the casino report.

Now don’t get too excited because this was pretty much shot down immediately. The main gist is the Mets planned on paying $100 million to buy up 62 acres next to the ball park. All those softball fields where Mexicans play pick up soccer during the summer. And then they were gonna put the Shinnecock Indians in there to run a full blown casino. Problem is you can’t have an live dealer casinos unless its on tribal land.

So I say we get some Indian chief to bless the shit out of the land and lets turn all those auto body shops and Mexican soccer fields into some real life Indian tribal land. Hi-ya-wath-ah! Hi-ya-wath-ah! Lets smoke-um peace pipe and watch some baseball and gamble our money into bolivian. Can you imagine how big of a draw that would be? I mean yes, obviously the number 1 way to draw people to the ball park is to put a winning product on the field. But along with the fact that the Mets have sucked for more or less eternity aside from a couple blips on the radar, the area surrounding Shea Stadium in Flushing Queens fucking sucks. Even up in the Bronx the area outside the Stadium has Stan’s and Billy’s. Bars and places to eat on 161st or River ave. There’s legit nothin surrounding CitiField besides junkyards. If you were to plop a fully functioning real life casino outside the park CitiField would become a serious hotspot. Closer than AC or Mohegan or Foxwoods. Get tickets to a weekend series and stay at the casino for a couple days. Have all sorts of ticket packages working in conjunction with the casino. It would have actually been a brilliant idea from the Mets – first time I said that in a while.

PS – Their backup plan of a “23 acre, $3 billion entertainment complex” will undoubtedly be a shopping mall and a movie theater and it will definitely suck.