All Bets Are Off For Manhattan Casino With Rejection Of East Side Project

By Lauren Hartley, The City

September 23, 2025

A key committee has voted down the third and final casino proposed in Manhattan.

The project, named Freedom Plaza and backed by the Soloviev Group and Mohegan Sun, would have been built in Murray Hill on an enormous empty lot near the United Nations that previously housed a Con Edison power plant.

The advisory committee for the casino project, consisting of appointees from the mayor, governor and local representatives, voted 4-2 to reject the proposal, with only the appointees of Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul voting yes.

That outcome was identical to the votes last week on two other Manhattan casino proposals, for Times Square and the far West Side. That leaves five casino proposals, in Queens, Brooklyn, The Bronx and the near suburbs, vying for up to three licenses from the state Gaming Facility Location Board.

Sulakshana Jain, a longtime resident of Murray Hill whose apartment window faces the Freedom Plaza site, was moved to tears after the vote. She had been working in recent weeks to gather more than 8,000 signatures opposing the casino plan.

“We have so much to be happy and celebrating about today,” she said.

Another Murray Hill resident, architect Tim Maldonado, celebrated the outcome and expressed his concern for what he says would have been an unacceptable environmental impact on the neighborhood, particularly from a proposed underground parking lot.

“It’s a contaminated building,” Maldonado said, speaking of the onetime Con Edison power facility. “You’re removing thousands of yards of material from there to create the parking. And the moment you have that, the whole neighborhood goes down the drain.”

Freedom Plaza Community Advisory Committee Chair Sandy McKee speaks while the group votes down the casino bid near the United Nations, Sept. 22, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

On Friday, ahead of the vote, the Adams administration turned up the heat on the community advisory committee, releasing a citywide report that showed Freedom Plaza driving the most economic impact and bringing the most jobs to the city of any of the proposed casinos.

On PIX 11, just hours before the Freedom Plaza vote, First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro said he was “confident” that the project would go through to the final round.

Time is running out for local boards to approve or reject the casino proposals for the downstate area, ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline. They include a proposed facility on a golf course in Throggs Neck in The Bronx, one next to Citi Field in Queens, one in Coney Island and expansion of the existing Resorts World racetrack electronic gaming hall at Aqueduct.

The state has up to three casino licenses to award by the end of this year. But the state’s gaming commission could have few to choose from. The Coney Island project, backed by developer Thor Equities, Chickasaw Nation and Saratoga Casino Development, faced a blow Monday when the chair of that neighborhood’s advisory committee announced he is pulling support.

Councilmember Justin Brannan wrote an op-ed published Monday saying he’ll be voting no on the casino proposal, and urged his fellow committee members “to do the same.”

“Coney Island has a history of snake-oil salesmen promising the stars and delivering dust,” he wrote.

Two more casino proposal final committee votes are scheduled this week, both on Thursday, for MGM’s plan to bring a full casino to the Yonkers racetrack and for the Genting Group to turn Resorts World in Queens into a fully licensed gambling facility. Currently, both are racinos, which are facilities that have a racetrack and can allow for slot machines, video lottery terminals and electronic table games.

This press release was produced by The City. The views expressed here are the author’s own.