New York City's first full casino with live table games opened to fanfare Tuesday.
Resorts World, a slots parlor in Queens, officially cut the ribbon on an expanded gambling area featuring more than 200 games with live dealers, including blackjack, craps, baccarat and roulette, as well as more than 2,500 slot machines.
The company says it will bring more tables and slot machines online later in the year. It has also promised to build a new hotel, restaurants, a 7,000-seat entertainment venue and more than 12 acres of new public green space on the 72-acre site.
“With our planned $5.5 billion expansion, this is only the beginning of something much bigger for Resorts World and for New York,” said Robert DeSalvio, president of Genting Americas East, a division of the Malaysia-based Genting Group that operates the casino in Queens.
Resorts World New York City has been operating for more than a decade next to the Aqueduct Racetrack near the John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens.
Company executives, elected officials and local residents marked the milestone Tuesday with a ceremonial dice roll. Rapper Nas, who is a partner in the development, was among those in attendance.
Resorts World is one of three projects recently awarded state gambling licenses to operate full-scale casinos in New York City.
Billionaire Mets owner Steve Cohen has proposed a $8.1 billion Hard Rock casino complex next to the baseball team's Citi Field ball park in Queens that would include a performance venue, hotel and retail space.
Bally’s has proposed a roughly $4 billion casino at the Ferry Point golf course in the Bronx that would include a hotel, event center, meeting spaces, restaurants and other amenities.
Those two other projects, though, are years away from completion.
The three approved projects bested several other proposals during the high-stakes competition for a casino license for the lucrative New York City area, including three casinos that had been proposed for Manhattan.
Four full casinos, all upstate, currently offer table games. The state also runs nine gambling halls without live table games, many of them also miles away from Manhattan.
