Las Vegas Sands set to develop Long Island casino
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LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Officials in New York’s Nassau County have reached a lease agreement with the Las Vegas Sands to develop a “world class-hotel and entertainment center” at the site where Long Island’s NHL team won four Stanley Cups.
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman in a formal announcement Wednesday said the deal will give the Las Vegas Sands control of the Long Island property, with the lease agreement the key to the developer’s plan to build the $4 billion resort on a 72-acre site.
“We are going to develop the Coliseum site and bring a world-class hotel and entertainment center — funded by a casino,” Blakeman said at a Wednesday news conference covered by News 12 Long Island. “We believe that will bring jobs, economic prosperity, tax relief and improved safety to Nassau County.”
The county’s planning commission is scheduled to vote Thursday on the lease agreement.
The NHL’s New York Islanders won four successive Stanley Cups while playing at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum — informally knowns as the Nassau Coliseum — in the 1980s. The team left the arena in 2015 and played at the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn before a new facility, UBS Arena in Elmont, New York, was completed in 2021.
Sands officials did not immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment. But during a fourth-quarter earnings call in January, Chairman and CEO Rob Goldstein called the shot at a New York casino an “extraordinary and unique opportunity.”
Citing the dynamics of the market, Goldstein told sbcamericas.com “The lucky winner is going to do very, very well. … We’re not looking to build a casino, not a regional casino, but rather a truly large hotel with spa convention space, dozens of restaurants, a new theater, a huge entertainment feature, a transformational product, which will positively impact the community and grow tourism, a powerful statement. We’re not looking to be in this thing in a limited way.
“We’ll be all the way in. And we think if we do it, it will be transformational for the county we’re working in, very good for the people in the county, and something they can be very proud of. And it will drive tourism — outsized tourism into Nassau.”
