Publisher / Editor Brian Harrod provides hyper local news for Yonkers, NY, that is also continually updated from thousands of sources on the Roundup Newswires Network
Gov Andrew Coumo Is Playing Coy As Gambling giants lobby for the authorization of Las Vegas-style casino gambling in Yonkers and Queens.
The new owner of Empire City Casino at Yonkers Raceway in Yonkers, New York is now looking to start unlocking value and believes that one of the ways to do this is by being given the nod to operate full-scale Las Vegas-style casino gambling, but Governor Andrew Cuomo just is not as excited as they are about giving them early approval.
MGM Resorts International bought the harness racing track and casino in January for $850 million. The company has already indicated that it nurtures hopes to be allowed to expand the property into a full-blown Las Vegas-style resort with slot machines and table games.
At present, Empire City Casino features 5,200 video-lottery terminals and a number of electronic table games and avoids paying its full share of taxes to Yonkers Public Schools, because of a Payment In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOT) deal.
With the help of Yonkers’ Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart- Cousins MGM will be seeking a full gaming license before the moratorium on casino expansion in New York is lifted in 2023.
The company also hopes to enter the state’s sports betting market, should Yonkers’ Assembly Gaming Chairman Gary Pretlow bring forth laws to allow the practice.
In a meeting with state legislators, Empire City Casino’s newly appointed CEO, Uri Clinton, told Ganett’s Albany Bureau that they are educating people and talking through the countless opportunities the authorization of a new Yonkers casino in the state would create.
Gambling expansion matters have traditionally been facing numerous hurdles in the state Legislature, and it will not be any different for the idea for expanded casinos.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other state officials are approaching the topic cautiously as Yonkers legislators Senator Shelley Mayer and Assemblyman Nader Sayegh appear to be throwing all caution to the wind.
Under New York’ law, no new casinos should be authorized until 2023, when a seven-year moratorium is set to expire. The moratorium was placed to help four recently launched Upstate commercial casinos gain foothold.
WNBC-TV: Raging Fire Tears Through Yonkers Apartment Building
A raging fire is tearing through a building in #Yonkers, video shows. Flames and smoke engulfed an apartment building on Parkview Avenue Tuesday evening, Chopper 4 video showed.
The area around the building has been cordoned off…..
WPIX – TV: Around 150 displaced after fire at Yonkers apartment building
YONKERS, NY —Around 150 people were displaced by a huge blaze at a Yonkers apartment building on Tuesday night.
The fire raged for hours at 15 Parkview Avenue. Scores of residents were quickly and safely evacuated.
Video from the scene shows flames engulfing the upper floors and shooting toward the sky. Thick, acrid smoke permeated the air for blocks near the building.
Firefighters from several nearby towns sped to the scene to help battle the blaze. At one point the fire was so intense that firefighters were pulled out of the building to battle the flames from the outside…..
NBC CT: ‘What Do We Do Now?’: Tenants Recall Horror in NY Fire
YONKERS: Flames and smoke engulfed the building on Parkview Avenue Tuesday evening
A massive blaze chewed through an apartment building in Yonkers, New York, on Tuesday, destroying the building as it burned for hours, leaving dozens of families homeless and choking the neighborhood in a plume of black smoke as firefighters worked into the next day to get it under control.
No injuries were reported in the blaze on Parkview Avenue that started around 6 p.m., but witnesses described the fire as an “inferno,” “thick” and eye-burning as tenants recount the uncertainty in their futures.
“The sky was all lit up, it was like an inferno,” witness Nancy Herran said as she wore a face-protecting mask. “I can’t believe how bad it got so fast. You can’t take a full breath and your eyes are burning.”
Other neighbors could only watch and pray as the fire ripped apart the building.
“God bless the firemen,” Christine Magrin said. “You really realize how talented and brave they are.”
Another witness who lives across the courtyard from the burning building said she can’t get the sight of the raging flames out of her mind.
“I looked out the kitchen window and I could see the smoke coming out from the top of the building,” Barbara Handley said. “Then I looked and flames like you never saw. Flames just coming up out of the windows of people’s apartments.”.
The Red Cross is helping 150 families who were left homeless in the building and neighboring buildings overcome by smoke. A temporary shelter was setup at nearby Roosevelt High School.
“I saw smoke coming out of the roof and the firemen were coming,” Irene Lewis, who lives on the second floor in the burned-out building, said.
“I ran into my apartment and I came to help my friend get her cats. I’ve been out on the streets ever since.”…..
WPIX TV: Nearly 150 families displaced after Yonkers apartment building fire
YONKERS, NY — Nearly 150 families were displaced by a huge blaze at a Yonkers apartment building Tuesday night.
The fire, which started at about 6:15 p.m., raged for hours at 15 Parkview Ave. as firefighters tried to get it under control.
Scores of residents were quickly and safely evacuated. The view captured by AIR11 flames engulfing the upper floors and shooting toward the sky. Thick, acrid smoke permeated the air for blocks near the building.
The fire started in the west side of the building, but since firefighters didn’t have access to the cockloft area, the fire quickly spread to the east side. Officials say there were no access points for water, making it hard to contain.
Firefighters from several nearby towns sped to the scene to help battle the blaze. At one point the fire was so intense that firefighters were pulled out of the building to battle the flames from the outside.
Firefighters still continued to hit hot spots that flared up overnight. As to what started the fire, investigators are still trying to figure out.
“There are some unconfirmed reports that some handiwork going on in one of the apartments… maybe some plumbers torching,” Yonkers Fire Commissioner Robert Sweeney said…..
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A rendering of Extell’s proposed redevelopment of Alexander Street riverfront property, that expected to be built in phases over a 10-year period with Yonkers IDA incentives. Some Yonkers officials say this property that sits between the Yonkers and Glenwood Train stations would help the city to turn around its yearly budget sagas.
YONKERS: In Two Separate Public Meetings Accountants PKF O’Connor Davies LLP Informed The Yonkers Industrial Agency (YIDA) And The Yonkers Economic Development Corporation Audit Committees That After A Detailed And Legal Government Auditing Standards Process They Found no Control Deficiencies.
This is commendable, because the the Yonkers IDA, Executive Director Jaime McGill has an exceptionally small staff that deals with extremely complex financial structures.
However, the Yonkers IDA did suffer a $500,000 loss for the year that was made up by the fund balance.
This was mainly because a seven year old $2.6 Million loan to the currently unprofitable Larkin Garage was forgiven, by converting it into a grant.
But, Shawn Griffin, Esq. of Harris Beach LLP put in place a legal caveat, that if and when the Larkin Garage became profitable it would be required to repay the IDA for over $300,000 in expenses inured on the deal for over seven years.
YIDA And YEDC Chairwoman Hon. Cecile D. Singer and other board members did their due diligence by engaging the PKF O’Connor Davies repeatedly with questions about the highly complex financial arrangements covered in the audit.
IDA Executive Director Jaime McGill’s staff was very transparent in providing any and all documents requested and needed by the press to properly inform the taxpayers of Yonkers.
Professor Samuel Abrams was accused by his college president of “attacking” members of the community
On Monday, students at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York, who referred to themselves as “students of color,” staged a large sit-in and presented the university with a laundry list of demands, one of which was for a “tenure review” of a professor whose op-ed in The New York Times offended them because of his supposed “anti-Blackness, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-woman bigotry.”
Professor Samuel Abrams had published an op-ed in The New York Times last October 16 in which he wrote that he had received an email from a senior staff member in the Office of Diversity and Campus Engagement at Sarah Lawrence soliciting ideas from the Sarah Lawrence community for a conference titled “Our Liberation Summit.”
Abrams wrote, “The conference would touch on such progressive topics as liberation spaces on campus, Black Lives Matter and justice for women as well as for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual and allied people.”
Abrams then noted the politically one-sided nature of the conference, writing, “As a conservative-leaning professor who has long promoted a diversity of viewpoints among my (very liberal) faculty colleagues and in my classes, I was taken aback by the college’s sponsorship of such a politically lopsided event. The email also piqued my interest in what sorts of other nonacademic events were being organized by the school’s administrative staff members.”
He added, “I soon learned that the Office of Student Affairs, which oversees a wide array of issues including student diversity and residence life, was organizing many overtly progressive events — programs with names like ‘Stay Healthy, Stay Woke,’ ‘Microaggressions’ and ‘Understanding White Privilege’ — without offering any programming that offered a meaningful ideological alternative. These events were conducted outside the classroom, in the students’ social and recreational spaces.”
Abrams cited a “nationally representative sample of roughly 900 ‘student-facing’ administrators” and found “liberal staff members outnumber their conservative counterparts by the astonishing ratio of 12-to-one.
Only 6 percent of campus administrators identified as conservative to some degree, while 71 percent classified themselves as liberal or very liberal.”
He commented, “It’s no wonder so much of the nonacademic programming on college campuses is politically one-sided”
“It appears that a fairly liberal student body is being taught by a very liberal professoriate — and socialized by an incredibly liberal group of administrators.”
Abrams concluded, “This warped ideological distribution among college administrators should give our students and their families pause. To students who are in their first semester at school, I urge you not to accept unthinkingly what your campus administrators are telling you. Their ideological imbalance, coupled with their agenda-setting power, threatens the free and open exchange of ideas, which is precisely what we need to protect in higher education in these politically polarized times.”
MGM Resorts International (NYSE:MGM) has declined 19.35% since March 9, 2018 and is downtrending. It has underperformed by 23.72% the S&P500.
Highfields Capital Management LP decreased its stake in MGM Resorts International (MGM) by 35.56% based on its latest 2018 Q4 regulatory filing with the SEC.
Highfields Capital Management Lp sold 1.21 million shares as the company’s stock declined 3.38% while stock markets rallied.
The hedge fund held 2.20 million shares of the hotels and resorts company at the end of 2018 Q4, valued at $53.37 million, down from 3.41 million at the end of the previous reported quarter.
Highfields Capital Management LP who had been investing in MGM Resorts International for a number of months, seems to be less bullish one the $14.23 billion market cap company.
MGM Resorts International (NYSE:MGM) has declined 19.35% since March 9, 2018 and is downtrending. It has underperformed by 23.72% the S&P500.
