Sands lease agreement advances

The Nassau County Planning Commission unanimously approved the lease agreement for Las Vegas Sands to take control the Nassau Coliseum at a meeting on July 18. The agreement was put to a vote by the Rules Committee on Monday, whose members also approved the proposal.

A full vote in the County Legislature is scheduled for Aug. 5.

The decision to turn the Uniondale site over to the Sands has generated a great deal of controversy. Because last week’s meeting was not open for public comment, the Say No to the Casino Civic Association held a news conference outside the county legislative building in Mineola, where the meeting took place, to express its members’ frustrations.

“I’m totally against the casino,” Pearl Jacobs, founder of the Nostrand Gardens Civic Association and a member of Say No to the Casino, said. “It’s no good for our environment, no good for our youth, no good for our community.”

The lease permits Las Vegas Sands to control the Coliseum property for 42 years. A second lease is being developed that would allow Sands to shut down the Coliseum and develop the property in two years, according to members of Say No to the Casino.

“Since we learned of this project, we have three times passed unanimous resolutions opposing the casino project,” Mary Carter Flanagan, mayor of Garden City, said.

Other community members gathered in protest outside the meeting alongside the anti-casino group, holding signs and voicing their opinions on the Sands project. The State Gaming Commission has said previously that the decision on as many as three new casino licenses will not be made until late 2025.

Vinny Muldoon, a Garden City village trustee who moved to Nassau County over 30 years ago from Ireland, said he believed the casino would do irreparable damage to suburban Nassau County, creating gambling addictions and “destroying the youth.”

“I say no to the casino for one reason and one reason only,” Muldoon said. “It’s because it destroys young people’s lives, families, and it leaves them penniless.”

Elizabeth McCoy, who has lived in East Meadow for over 60 years, said she was concerned about what the lease agreement could mean for the future of the 72-acre Coliseum property. She opposes the casino, and said she feared that the lease would only make the process easier for Sands.

“Why does it have to be 42 years?” McCoy asked the crowd. “Where is the logic, and what is the underlying ulterior motive in that? Is this really about allowing the Las Vegas Sands an open opportunity to get their foot in the door?”

Not everyone in attendance opposed the lease. Grant Newburger, political director of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Nassau and Suffolk Counties, supports Sands’ taking control of the Coliseum because, he said, it will protect the workers already employed there.

“Specifically what we’re talking about today is the lease transfer of the existing Coliseum,” Newburger said. “There are 400 union members who work there, and we want to make sure they can work there tomorrow.”

Sands is building relationships with Long Island businesses in the hope of garnering support for the project, according to Tracey Edwards, senior vice president and corporate social responsibility officer for Sands New York. The company hosted “procurement academies for Long Island business owners and entrepreneurs” throughout 2023 in preparation for the project.

Edwards said that Sands intend to source 75 percent of its goods and services locally, from landscaping, information technology, and accounting and legal services to hotel chocolates, flowers and bed linens.

“We are preparing to create both the greenest building on Long Island and a project that will create more than 5,000 long-term careers and over 8,500 construction jobs,” she said. “These positions will be management and union jobs. We are working with educational partners at Nassau Community College and Long Island University, as well as Long Island’s labor community, to create workforce training programs that will create career pathways for Long Islanders to stay on Long Island and thrive here.”

Despite the confidence Sands and supporters have in the company’s involvement on Long Island, many community members are still far from convinced that the proposed casino would be a good idea for local neighborhoods.

“What kind of environment are we creating for our future generations if we allow a casino corporation to manipulate 72 acres of prime Nassau County real estate into something that resembles a mini Atlantic City?” McCoy said.

For more information on issues relating to the Sands New York Project, visit SandsNewYork.com.

Have an opinion on the proposed Sands complex? Send a letter to kradziski@liherald.com.