Place your bets on Nassau Coliseum casino

One or more Shinnecock casinos appear to be in the cards for Long Island, but two local leaders hope one of them is not built on the Nassau Coliseum property. 

The pros and cons of casinos were among the topics at the Smart Growth Summit, hosted at the Melville Marriott on Nov. 19 by a panel of leaders in business, government and education.

The summit, sponsored by Vision Long Island, featured more than a dozen workshops aimed at addressing growth on Long Island, including what went wrong in the past, what is going well right now and what can be done in the future. Smart growth is a term for development that is environmentally and economically sound, discouraging sprawl and the dependence on cars. 

With the Lighthouse project in limbo and with no clear picture of the future of the 77 acres surrounding the aging Coliseum, Shinnecock Nation and Nassau County officials discussed the possibility of opening a gaming facility or entertainment center on the property. 

Randy King, chairman of the Shinnecock Board of Trustees, did not stay for the panel discussion, but earlier in the Summit he addressed his tribe’s desire to develop on Long Island without naming specific locations. “We want to do this smart,” King said. “We have to blend all the different sensibilities together and its specific path to make this project a reality.”

The Shinnecocks took a major step toward opening a casino when they attained long-sought status as a federally recognized tribe in October. The tribe was recognized in July, but a Connecticut gaming commission and a faction of the Montaukett tribe challenged the decision in federal court. Those challenges were dismissed on Oct. 1.

In July, the Town of Hempstead presented a scaled-down version of the Lighthouse project, a proposal to transform the Coliseum property into a mixed-use development. Developers Charles Wang and Scott Rechler, who designed a much more ambitious project for the property, have said that the town’s proposal is not economically viable. Neither plan has been acted on since the July announcement. 

That was when casino talks began to heat up.