Friday, November 17, 2006

The fate of a stalled plan to bring the largest video gaming parlor in the
country to Queens could rest in the hands of Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer.
The 4,500-Video Lottery Terminal parlor was set to open this year at
Aqueduct Racetrack in Ozone Park, but is now on indefinite hold after the
track's owner declared bankruptcy.
"The delay in approving this is what drove us to bankruptcy in the first
place," said Aqueduct spokesman Bill Nader, referring to the racetrack's
owner, the New York Racing Association. "Once we do get approval, the
revenue going to New York state from these machines will be the same revenue
as all the Atlantic City gambling combined provides the state of New
Jersey." The devices look like traditional slot machines but are actually
"video lottery terminals," or VLTs, and use a different equation than slots
to calculate winners. Players can't tell the difference. The racing
association filed for bankruptcy earlier this month, preventing the New York
Lottery, which supervises the eight other video lottery sites in the state,
from approving the Aqueduct parlor. The delay stemmed in part from the
financial problems at the racing association. Now the fate of what would be
the city's first legal gambling hall is in the hands of Spitzer, who will
decide whether to find new management for Aqueduct. Representatives for
Spitzer's transition team were not immediately available for comment
Wednesday evening. "If and when the VLTs open at Aqueduct, they will be a
huge draw," said Bennett Liebman, coordinator of the Racing & Gaming Law
Program at Albany Law School. "You have such an enormous market to draw from
in New York City, and a regular player will not be able to tell the
difference between that and Atlantic City."

Extremely profitable VTL halls are up and running at Yonkers Raceway and
seven other racetracks upstate. They are all open seven days a week, from 10
a.m. to 2 a.m, and brought in more than $12 million last year.

The State Supreme Court recently validated the legalilty of the video
terminals, half of whose proceeds benefit public schools.

Seventy years ago, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia lifted a sledgehammer and
personally wrecked dozens of slot machines confiscated from gangster Frank
Costello. Now the city is poised to have a legal video terminal parlor with
yearly profits beyond Costello's wildest dreams.