Manhattan Community Board Goes All-In Against Wynn Resorts’ Casino Ambitions

While not a death knell for Wynn Resorts and its partner Related Companies’ plans for a midtown Manhattan hotel and casino complex, it’s certainly not a ringing endorsement.

Community Board 4, which represents the Hudson Yards neighborhood where the planned $12 billion casino would be built, unanimously voted against the plan Monday night.

And while their vote is only advisory in nature, it will obviously be noted by the future Community Advisory Committee, which is part of the red tape that will – theoretically – bring up to three casinos to downstate New York.

“A carefully planned mixed-use neighborhood is wiped out for a garish Las Vegas-style monstrosity that has no place on Manhattan’s West Side,” said Joshua David, a former CB4 member who testified Monday, according to the New York Post. “If we wanted to live in Las Vegas,” he said, “we would live in Las Vegas.”

One major sticking point for the board members was the very-literal shadow the proposed 80-story hotel and casino would cast over The High Line, which is a popular park built atop an old freight train line in the neighborhood.

According to the Post, Friends of The High Line executive director Alan van Capelle was thrilled with the decision by the community board, noting the building would “do permanent damage to the High Line experience.”

Against the idea from the start

And while the board’s outright hostility to the idea of the complex is noted, it is not, in any way a new development – they have been against the proposal from the word go.

In fact, the community board and Related Companies have not seen eye-to-eye for decades.

In 2009, the proposed casino site was set to be turned into a residential property by Related. Clearly, that never happened.

“MCB4 remains mystified how the Department and Commission of City Planning could review and consider such a plan which erases years of sound city planning and community efforts to replace it with such an anti-urban and anti-New York vision,” the board wrote in a April 1, 2024 letter, according to the Post.  “MCB4 must note it cannot support the proposed project’s drastic shift from residential to commercial use designed around casino use. MCB4 raises the following question to both the Related Companies and the City of New York. Why should communities around the City of New York work with the real estate industry and the City government to respond and agree to zoning changes with detailed site plans and Points of Agreement when such plans and agreements can be discarded at a later date?”

While Community Board 4 is adamantly opposed, other community boards in New York have shown a willingness to embrace a new casino property.

New York Mets owner Steve Cohen is partnering with Hard Rock in an effort to bring a casino and hotel complex to a parking lot outside of Citi Field. Community board 7 and 8 have backed that proposal.

Community Board 11, which represents Coney Island and where Thor Equities Group, with Saratoga Casino Holdings, the Chickasaw Nation, and Legends Hospitality are hoping to build a casino complex, also voted to grant changes in zoning that would allow a casino to be built.

It is expected that final decisions – one way or another – will be finished by the end of the calendar year.