Hard Rock Casino Meadowlands — a partnership between the Florida-based gaming company and the Meadowlands Racetrack — is the name of a proposed new casino that will be unveiled next week, track operator Jeff Gural said Tuesday.
The announcement will come about a month before a deadline for state election officials to approve a question for the November ballot on ending Atlantic City’s casino monopoly in New Jersey. State Senate President Stephen M. Sweeney said last July that he would seek to place such a referendum in on the November 2015 ballot because the deadline to add it to the November 2014 ballot had just passed.
But three weeks ago, Sweeney said he was considering whether to wait a year, until the 2016 general election, given the low turnout expected with only Assembly members up for statewide election this fall.
“We believe that expanding gaming to North Jersey will strengthen the state’s casino industry, boost the economy and help Atlantic City’s financial recovery, but there is no specific timetable at this point,” said Richard McGrath, Sweeney’s spokesman.
Gural and other North Jersey casino supporters, however, say the ailing horse racing and Atlantic City casino industries cannot wait any longer to benefit from shares of an estimated $400 million or more in annual tax revenues that could be raised from operation of a Meadowlands casino.
“We’re offering to pay a high tax rate, around 50 percent, just like Pennsylvania,” Gural said, adding that the new casino would be attached to the two-year-old grandstand near Paterson Plank Road. “I know there are people who think we’d just be building ‘slots in a box,’ but this is a spectacular project and I want them to see what we have in mind.”
The renderings and video of the proposal are to be shown at a press conference next Wednesday at the new grandstand.
State Sen. Paul Sarlo, D-Wood-Ridge, who has been briefed on the proposal, said that Hard Rock makes for a “premier international and gaming partner” for the track.
“It doesn’t automatically mean that Jeff is getting [a casino], but he is out of the gate much quicker than anybody else,” Sarlo said.
Gural said that polling has shown that the Meadowlands is a more popular site for a casino than potential locations in Jersey City and Newark, given the absence of residences on the grounds of the Meadowlands Sports Complex.
Approval of the ballot question, which is likely to ask voters to approve up to two casinos in North Jersey, is far from assured. But if the ballot question is offered and then passes in November, the Legislature and Governor Christie — as they did following a referendum supporting sports betting in 2011 — likely would turn that support into law by early 2016. That would be followed by a months-long bidding process, likely pushing a casino opening into 2018 at the earliest.
In 2013, Hard Rock, a subsidiary of Seminole Hard Rock Entertainment, announced an equity stake of 16 percent of the new $100 million Meadowlands grandstand that was then under construction. That deal included an option to invest in “any projected future developments at the racetrack” and to promote concerts and festivals at the track.
Three months ago, Hard Rock was issued a “certificate of compliance” by the Casino Control Commission that would be a preliminary requirement for a casino anywhere that it was permitted by the state.
Gural reached an agreement in 2011 with the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority that entitles him to a refund of his construction costs if a casino is built at the Meadowlands Sports Complex and operated by anyone other than him.
By John Brennan