(Bloomberg) - Hedge fund titan. Movie character. Art collector. Sports team owner. And possibly soon, casino boss.
Steve Cohen is one step closer to the new title after getting a preliminary nod from the New York State Gaming Commission, clearing the largest hurdle to his plan to operate a full-scale casino in New York City. It will usher in a new era for an investor regarded as one of the top hedge fund managers before his firm was caught up in an insider-trading scandal more than a decade ago.
The billionaire founder of Point72 Asset Management has since returned to the highest echelons of investing. But he’s also become known for his side endeavors, including his 2020 purchase of baseball’s New York Mets, high-profile forays into the world of fine art and soon, assuming a final sign-off from the state gaming commission, a job as the proprietor of a Queens gambling house.
The plan is for the casino project known as Metropolitan Park to bring in some $3.9 billion of revenue a year for Cohen and his partners, Hard Rock International and the Seminole Tribe of Florida, once it’s built on land adjacent to Citi Field, where the Mets play their home games. After the state gaming commission’s facility location board signed off on the plan Monday, the full commission will now do a final review to ensure the idea meets licensing criteria and environmental requirements. It’s expected to award the licenses by year-end.
The provisional victory brings Cohen closer to a payoff after a multiyear, multifront and multimillion-dollar charm offensive to win over the Queens residents and politicians needed to support the project. The quest to operate a casino in New York City, where the number of potential gamblers offers the prospect of large profits, even included a feng shui expert who determined the proposed complex had an “auspicious” shape.
Almost a dozen bidders initially vied to build casinos in New York. But Cohen’s $8 billion proposal was one of only three that ultimately made it through the gauntlet of regulatory, legal and political hurdles. The other two were Genting Group’s Resorts World, which got preliminary approval to expand a gaming site next to the Aqueduct racetrack in Queens; and Bally’s Corp., which got an initial nod to build a casino at the site of a Bronx golf course previously developed by President Donald Trump.
“After years of community engagement and support, Metropolitan Park is one step closer to becoming a reality,” Karl Rickett, a spokesman for the Cohen-backed project, said in a statement. “We look forward to the gaming commission’s review.”
Reputational Renaissance
Winning a casino license would represent a remarkable reputational rehabilitation for Cohen — whose previous hedge fund, SAC Capital Advisors, pleaded guilty in 2014 to securities fraud and paid a record $1.8 billion in fines. Although Cohen wasn’t charged personally, he was barred by the Securities and Exchange Commission from trading outside money for two years. He rebranded the firm as Point72. It now has $41.5 billion of assets and 3,000 employees, recently adding new strategies including an AI-focused stock picking fund.
According to state law, applicants for a casino license are subject to a background investigation by the gaming commission. The applicants must prove their suitability through “clear and convincing evidence,” and the commission must consider “integrity, honesty, good character and reputation” among other factors in its investigations.
Richard McGowan, an associate professor of finance at Boston College who studies casinos, says the fact that Cohen was never personally charged with wrongdoing will make it easier for officials to grant him a casino license.
More remarkable, according to McGowan, is that a Major League Baseball owner may be allowed to own a casino adjacent to the field where his team plays. That’s an illustration of just how enmeshed professional sports and legalized gambling have become, he said.
“Five years ago, this would never have been permitted,” he said.
Rickett, the Metropolitan Park spokesman, dismissed concerns about any overlap between team ownership and sports gambling. He noted that Hard Rock would operate the sports book, and said Cohen wouldn’t receive any revenue from baseball betting.
Metropolitan Park, in Queens’ once-industrial Willets Point neighborhood, is set to rise on what is now an asphalt parking lot.
After it opens in 2030, it will include a 1,000-room hotel, a 5,000-seat music venue, a park and food hall, according to bid documents submitted to the state. Cohen pledged to fund the development of 450 new units of affordable housing in Corona, and estimated the project is poised to generate more than 20,000 temporary and permanent jobs.
Cohen, who has a net worth north of $17 billion, began building up his profile in Queens years before legislation passed in early 2022 that allowed as many as three licenses for full-scale casinos in the New York City area. While so-called “racinos” at an MGM Resorts location in Yonkers and at a Resorts World facility in southeast Queens offer slot-machine games, neither facility features live dealers for table games like blackjack or poker, which would be allowed in full-scale casinos.
In 2021, Cohen gave almost $20 million to New York City’s government to support small businesses hurt by the Covid pandemic, and allowed Citi Field to be used as a Covid vaccination site.
From 2021 through 2024, the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation, the charity he runs with his wife, donated millions of dollars to Queens-based charities and nonprofits, including $5 million to a mental health counseling center for children called The Child Center of New York. He made waves when he gave $116.2 million to LaGuardia Community College in 2024 – a record gift for institutions tied to the City University of New York.
Cohen’s goodwill campaign and stewardship of the Mets — the team has shown some signs of life as the payroll ballooned following Cohen’s purchase, including a playoff appearance in 2024 — has proved so endearing that some Queens locals and politicians were unironically calling Cohen “Uncle Steve.”
The team behind Metropolitan Park also hired community outreach and engagement consultants, including former elected officials and aides with close ties to the city and the borough’s Asian-American and Latino communities, and held more than 1,000 meetings and 16 public workshops to explain the proposal.
Cohen even brought in an internationally-recognized feng shui expert named Louisa Ong-Lee, who’d worked on George Lucas’s Sandcrawler animation studio in Singapore. Ong-Lee determined the proposed casino complex, which is in “the shape of a bat” — the animal, not the baseball equipment — was “auspicious” because bats are “symbolic of good fortune, happiness, joy and longevity.”
State lawmakers required that every casino bid win support from a majority of members of a six-person “community advisory committee.” Those representatives could make or break a project, and Cohen and his team showed the Queens community “respect,” said Queens Borough President Donovan Richards.
“It didn’t matter if you were an elected official, or a clergy person, or whether you had no connection to the political system, they literally went to every corner of this earth to make sure that they spoke to everybody,” Richards said.
Richards compared Cohen’s process to Amazon.com Inc.’s infamous failure to build a new corporate headquarters in Queens in 2018. That project died after local officials and residents lodged a wave of criticisms about the company’s failure to include them in the planning process, unlike Metropolitan Park.
“What made this plan much different than a lot of larger economic development projects is they listened first,” Richards said in September. “They didn’t come into Queens and just shove a plan down our throat.”
By Laura Nahmias
With assistance from Nacha Cattan, Patrick Clark and Katherine Burton
