Broadway’s right — Jay-Z’s Times Square casino bid…
Broadway was singing a completely different showtune this week.
Luck be a woman… elsewhere!
Many of the theater’s highly effective unions, landlords, commerce organizations and ally companies a-five-six-seven-hate Jay-Z, Caesars Entertainment and SL Green Realty’s dangerous, dangerous, dangerous bid to plop a casino in Times Square.
Broadway employees protested the bid for a casino to be constructed right in the center of Times Square. Billy Tompkins/ZUMA / SplashNews.com
In the exact same building that’s home to family-friendly “The Lion King,” 1515 Broadway, blackjack beckons.
One block away from “Hamilton,” drunk vacationers dropping all of their Benjamins.
Broadway feels such intense loathing toward Beyonce’s husband’s plan for Caesars Palace Times Square that, just like the hippies of “Hair,” the professionals staged a rally Thursday by the crimson steps forward of Friday’s deadline for proposals.
They had been virtually singing “One Day More” on the market.
“This casino’s developers don’t care about improving this neighborhood,” Broadway League prez Jean Valjean, I imply, Jason Laks stated. “A casino in the heart of Times Square would only set this area back.”
Do you hear the people sing?
Eight bids are competing for three playing licenses around the metro space — from close to the UN (just what overseas dignitaries need!) all the best way up to Yonkers.
Caesars’ is the splashiest.
Caesars Palace Times Square would make its home at 1515 Broadway. A Better Times Square
I’m not a lot of a protester.
What do I would like? A chair! When do I would like it? Now!
But I sit in solidarity with Broadway. They’re lifeless right. The very last thing the Crossroads of the World wants is poker tables, slot machines and the inevitable filth and riffraff that cling to them like saran wrap.
The theater industry’s chief beef, however, is a financial one.
“A casino can go anywhere,” Laks stated. “Broadway can only be here.”
Show people insist that a shiny new playing den would dangerously compete with their productions, that are only just getting back to some semblance of pre-pandemic normalcy.
This previous Broadway season had the best attendance ranges since 2019.
A casino would rain on their parade.
Jay-Z is one of the forces behind the Times Square casino bid. Getty Images
Gaming institutions are designed to keep clients inside them so they’ll spend all their money on the premises — at proprietary lodges, bars, eating places and entertainments.
Not at Joe Allen. Not at Hurley’s. Not at Un Deux Trois. Only at Caesars.
Once inside, the buildings have a tendency to be labyrinthine and difficult to make your method out of.
Intentionally.
Those sneaks use psychological tips such as dim lighting and windowless rooms to make you lose observe of time.
In short, the people who run casinos don’t really need you to scurry off to see “Aladdin.”
A Better Times Square
Caesars says: Au contraire. Our business might be a boon to Broadway. We’ll buy up 1000’s of tickets.
That’s humorous as “The Book of Mormon.” How does it benefit Caesars to ship clients to a 2 ½-hour musical at 8 p.m.?
It doesn’t. That’s just lip service to get the heavyweight Broadway League and Shubert Organization onboard.
What of Las Vegas? They have exhibits, too, you say? Yes, Sin City does.
But it’s a completely different animal. You enter them from the casino ground. And they’re practically all 90 minutes long — purpose-built to get you back to the playing cards and chips ASAP.
Twenty Broadway musicals presently are more than two hours and have an intermission.
By the best way, Broadway exhibits not known as “Mamma Mia!,” virtually all the time flop exhausting in Vegas.
So that’s one giant dilemma.
While Las Vegas has exhibits, most are 90 minutes and entered from the casino ground. A Better Times Square
Here’s my difficulty. Times Square is already a Circus, Circus. The space has been particularly disgusting and unruly since 2020, even if stronger policing has helped in current months.
The metropolis’s imbecilic strikes over the years to flip a lot of it into a car-free pedestrian plaza has already offered ample alternative for the homeless to sleep on the ground and drug sellers with a fixed provide impaired loiterers.
So, let’s add playing to that poisonous combine.
Nobody with a mind actually believes that a casino would improve Times Square.
Just like no one actually believed that legalizing pot could be a consequence-free moneymaker for the state.
Our ethically challenged politicians go gaga for these horrible concepts because of the payoffs they get.
Meanwhile our neighborhoods and companies undergo.
The only high rollers Times Square wants are traders who pour tens of millions into dangerous Broadway exhibits.
Now, that’s one helluva gamble.
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