What is a city to do when its hotels and offices are half empty, its bars filled with nothing but lonely alcoholics, and few tourists care to make the journey to enjoy its cultural offerings? For New York City, the answer is to pull a play out of the Las Vegas handbook—a destiny equipped with manufacturing fun and entertainment. In Times Square, more than 20% of its businesses remain closed along with six hotels and a newly opened restaurant endured three robberies before shutting down.
Before the pandemic, this district employed 66,000 people and represented roughly 15% of New York’s total economy. Gotham is resilient and Times Square has already started reinventing itself. Since 2021, a new hotel has been opening in stages with an outdoor pool overlooking the theater district and another opening in 2023 includes a concert stage.
Swimming pools and concerts are nice, but the real money is in the casinos, and world-class REIT, SL Green, has a plan that should excite hotel unions and casino operators. CEO Marc Holiday is proposing a casino project and suggests Times Square is the “absolute best, most obvious, least impactful and most globally accepted area” for it. Hard to argue as the neighborhood is already home to comedy clubs, hotels, Disney characters, women wearing nothing but painted-on bikinis, and, of course, the Naked Cowboy.
No doubt there will be opponents to turning Times Square into a hybrid mecca of debauchery and family fun but Vegas dances well, so can we.
Konrad Putzier & Peter Grand. “Times Square Plots Its Comeback, and It Looks like Las Vegas.” The Wall Street Journal, 26 Apr. 2022, www.wsj.com/articles/times-square-plots-its-comeback-and-it-looks-like-las-vegas-11650965581?mod=hp_lista_pos4.Leave a Comment