From the bright lights of Sin City, Sheldon Aldelson, chairman and CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, has his eyes set east on another metropolitan city, one that’s billed as the “City that Never Sleeps”.
As the man that already counts the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino and the Sands Expo and Convention Center to his name, Aldelson is looking to build a Las Vegas Sands casino-convention complex in New York City, particularly at the the Javits Center in the West Side of Manhattan.
In a conversation with HotelNews.com, Las Vegas Sands Corp. President Mike Leven said that the company is intrigued at the possibility of putting their own complex in Manhattan, particularly at the Javits Center. “There’s a little noise in New York now, and we’re going to take a look and see if we can put something . . . maybe in Manhattan and be able to maybe do something with [the Jacob K. Javits Center] . . . and put our complex there,” Leven said.
Likewise, Sands spokesman Ron Reese has made no bones about the potential benefits of a casino further boosting tourism numbers in the already dynamic market of New York City, “Our integrated resort properties have produced tremendous overall tourism and economic benefit in every location in which we operate, and under the right circumstances, we would be honored to bring our industry-leading, convention-based business model to New York,” he said.
But for every person looking at the potential benefits of having a casino resort in the heart of Manhattan, there are also those who are opposed to the idea, saying that New York already posts some of the highest tourism numbers of any city in America and bringing in a casino would do more harm than good the city.
One of these people is East Side Assemblyman Micah Kellner, who serves on the Racing and Wagering Committee. According to Kellner, he would “do everything possible” to make sure that LVS can’t build their proposed casino at the Javits Center, saying that doing so would “drastically transform the West Side”, an area known for its locale charm, “in a way many don’t want to see.”
LVS’s interest in the Big Apple comes on the same time that ‘The Motley Fool’, one of the industry’s most followed expert analysis for millions of investors worldwide, reported Sands Chinas’s increasing foothold in the Asian market. The company, which counts the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, as well as Sands Macao, the Venetian, and the Four Seasons Hotel in Macau as its meal tickets, has benefited greatly from the thriving Asian destinations with four quarter casino revenues rising by 20% from the past year in Macau and 44% in the same time frame in Singapore.
For a company that has already garnered a fifth of Macau’s gaming market, combined with an upswing of momentum expected to come in when their latest resort development, the Sands Cotai Central, opens on April 11, LVS clearly has its eyes set on becoming an even bigger player in the industry.
Whether its in Manhattan or the many other potential Asian locations that are currently being floated around – Japan, Korea, Vietnam, India, and Taiwan are among the top options – the Las Vegas Sands Corporation appears to be on a path headed for tremendous growth in the coming years.
