North Hempstead town officials last week joined in protests against a Nassau Regional Off-Track Betting Corporation plan to construct a video gambling parlor at the former Fortunoff site in Westbury, located near the Source Mall.
Town Supervisor Judi Bosworth (D-Great Neck), Town Clerk Wayne Wink (D-Roslyn) and Town Councilwoman Viviana Russell (D-New Cassel) each spoke during a rally at St. Brigid – Our Lady of Hope Regional School on Thursday and demonstrated with protestors at the site on Saturday.
“Thing thing people don’t want to hear today is, ‘it’s not in my jurisdiction.’ We’re elected to represent you, to speak for you, whether it’s in our jurisdiction or not,” Bosworth said Thursday.
In a Jan. 6 letter to OTB officials, Bosworth and Russell called for the immediate halt to negotiations for the Fortunoff site, saying that the proposal was made with virtually no community outreach due to its announcement between Christmas and New Year’s Day last year. The use of the Fortunoff site, which is located in the Town of Hempstead, is also opposed by Town of Hempstead Supervisor Kate Murray and Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano.
If a casino is built, more than 1,200 North Hempstead residences located within a half-mile of the proposed site on Old Country Road would be affected, Bosworth said.
Bosworth commended the Westbury community on Thursday for organizing more than 1,000 residents and elected officials from the towns of Hempstead and North Hempstead, Nassau County and the state who packed the gym at St. Brigid’s, holding signs of opposition to the casino.
“This is not the environment of five, 10 years ago,” she said. “This is the Facebook environment, this is the e-mail environment. When you have a cause that people want to rally around, through social media, we can get people together, and the proof in the pudding is the crowd that’s here today.”
Russell, whose 1st Town Council District includes Westbury, questioned why other proposed sites, such as the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum and the OTB’s Race Palace facility in Plainview, were quickly rejected in favor of the Fortunoff site.
“As your elected official, I’m not going to tell you it’s not in my jurisdiction. I’m not going to tell you there’s nothing we can do because we can do something,” she said. “If we have to, we will take it to the very end, fighting this.”
Wink, a former North Hempstead councilman and Nassau County legislator, said the Nassau OTB’s plan is meant “to prop up a dying [gaming] industry” that would likely delay a similar fate to Suffolk and New York City’s OTB – bankruptcy.
“We may have been drafted by Nassau OTB, but I’m here to say that I’m here to enlist and I’m here to recruit everybody we know,” Wink said. “Every neighbor, every friend, every family member needs to be recruited for this battle to remind Nassau OTB and everybody on up that you can’t spell ‘casino’ without ‘n-o.’”
Both Thursday’s and Saturday’s events were organized by the Village of Westbury and a grassroots contingent of residents identified on social media pages as “Stop The Casino At Fortunoff.”
A Facebook page for the group had received 3,515 likes by press time, while a Change.org petition against the construction of the facility had 2,455 signatures.
Arthur Walsh, general counsel to the Nassau OTB, said Thursday that no contract has been finalized for the Fortunoff site and that 200 full-time jobs are expected to be added with the project.
The parlor, which is expected to hold up to 1,000 video slot machines, would occupy 15 percent – or 30,000 square-feet – of the roughly 200,000 square-foot building, OTB has said. If the site were to be acquired, the gaming parlor is expected to open some time this year.
State Sen. Jack Martins (R-Mineola) and Murray reiterated previous remarks pushing for a new site for the casino.
Martins suggested the proposal move to the Coliseum, while Murray opposed both the Fortunoff and Coliseum sites.
