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Since it first opened it doors in 1972, the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum has hosted just about every type of indoor entertainment imaginable, from New York Islanders games and wrestling to concerts and Donald Trump rallies. The venerable arena has fallen on hard times since the Islanders moved down Hempstead Turnpike to Belmont Park, however, and Nassau County officials have been looking at potential uses for the site.
With the decision made to award casino gaming licenses in downstate New York, the Las Vegas Sands looked at building a casino at the Uniondale site, but the Sands announced on Thursday that it was now pulling the plug on a casino in the New York area. Bruce Blakeman is the Nassau County Executive; he appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program to talk about what he thinks will now happen to the venerable old barn.
“I’m not really disappointed,” Blakeman told host Larry Mendte. “We knew that there were things going on that were out of our control, such as the online gaming that now is so popular and is taking a large portion of gaming revenue away from land-based bricks and mortar casinos. For the last couple of months, we’ve been hearing noises that The Sands was rethinking their business model for the United States. As you probably know, they sold all of their casinos in Las Vegas, and because Nassau County was such an attractive site they wanted to give it a try here in Nassau County to get the license. Certainly, I thought it was worth a try, but I always knew that it wasn’t a done deal.”
In fact, Blakeman says there is still a chance the Sands or another developer does something else with the Coliseum site. “The Sands still has to develop the site with a luxury hotel, an entertainment center, housing and some other accoutrements to the area, and we also have a number of gaming entities that are very interesting that are interested in taking The Sands place… so it’s a site that probably right now the most valuable property in Nassau County.”
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