www.broadwayworld.com: The Caesars Palace Community Advisory Committee held its first public meeting Wednesday at the Scandinavia House, discussing a proposed Caesars Palace casino in Times Square — a move many in the Broadway community believe would be detrimental to New York City theater.
4 comments:
I am very saddened to read that New York City is considering adding a casino to Times Square and, in doing so, taking away the Minskoff Theatre. The idea of removing any theater is heart-crushing, but destroying a Broadway theater is extra heartbreaking. For many young artists, Broadway is a dream; it's a beautiful and amazing place where dreams are started and built. When you get to remove one Broadway theater, it opens up the opportunity that they may want to continue tearing down Broadway theaters to build more companies that might bring more profit to the top guys, but when you create theater and art, you give people hope and dreams and give them something to live for. As good as more money sounds, you can have all the money in the world, but money does not bring you happiness or a will to live and drive to live fully.
I firmly believe that Times Square is just not where a casino belongs. It can go anywhere else in New York City, but not in such a popular spot. The many shows that are running on Broadway could lose a lot of money if they are losing their audience to a casino that's about a five minute walk away. People would be way more attracted to go win big money instead of enjoying the art and talent of the variety of shows they could go see instead. Not only could it have a negative impact on the many hardworking cast and crew members of Broadway, but also on many business owners in that area. Just like what Alexander Robertson said, many of those local businesses are struggling after the pandemic and it still affects them today. Over time, Times Square would be more known for its potential casino rather than the many incredible performances that would neighbor it.
This honestly sucks. Casinos need to stick to Las Vegas, not be in NYC. NYC already has an amazing night life scene, and a casino isnt going to add to it, rather move away from it. Why go see Broadway and a story, then go have some $1 pizza after, when you can potentially win thousands of dollars and get drunk or smoke! Also, the article makes a great point of crowd control issues. Already in Vegas at night you cant walk around the strip because of the hecticness of people coming and going to the casino, putting that in an already busy time square will be chaos for managing crowds trying to get into theatres and see time square. It will simply make those who cannot handle crowds not want to go to time square even more. This just seems like a cash grab attempt from Caesars Entertainment, not a project to make time square better. It’s to take advantage of the tourists, not to support the heart of theatre.
I don't think a casino in the middle of the Broadway District in New York is a sound economic practice. While it seems that on the surface that would energize and revitalize businesses around them, it just seems like a risky move, especially considering that this area of New York City isn't struggling economically quite as much as some of the proponents of this plan seem to claim that it is. It's Times Square. It’s doing fine.It may be true that small businesses are still struggling with the effects of the pandemic, but as far as I'm aware, casinos aren't really known for providing a massive boost to all of the surrounding establishments in the same way that theaters are. People usually just go to casinos to go to that specific casino, spend all their money there, and then when they leave, they don't have any more money to spend.
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