Good morning. It's Friday. We'll look at why the latest entrant in the race for a casino license in New York City sees Times Square as the place to be. We'll also get a glimpse of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that hints at the present-day monarchy in Britain, even though it's about the Tudors. |
 | | Nina Westervelt for The New York Times |
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The battle to win a New York City casino license has heated up, with a real estate developer and a gambling powerhouse proposing a Caesars Palace casino in Times Square. The developer, SL Green Realty Corporation, and the gambling giant Caesars Entertainment are trying to line up restaurants, retailers and construction workers in a pro-casino coalition. |
This comes a month after another real estate colossus, Related Companies, joined with the Las Vegas gambling giant Wynn Resorts in a bid for a casino in Related's Hudson Yards complex. |
I asked Dana Rubinstein, who covers New York City politics, about the proposal from SL Green and Caesars. |
What would a casino mean for Times Square? How would it change the neighborhood? |
That's a hard question to answer, in part because the development team has yet to release many specifics, and in part because Times Square is an unusual location. It's at the heart of New York City's tourist trade and is packed to the gills with out-of-towners, transit, traffic and neon lights. It's so full of activity that it's not clear that the average New Yorker would notice the arrival of a casino there. |
On the other hand, critics worry that casinos bring an unsavory element to a neighborhood that's already showing increasing signs of disorder and heightened violent crime. |
Aren't theater owners concerned that a casino would nudge Broadway shows aside as a main attraction in Times Square? How are the theaters doing at the box office? And what does the union that represents performers have to say? |
Broadway is struggling. Fewer theaters have shows running than before the pandemic, and they are grossing less revenue. "The Phantom of the Opera," Broadway's longest-running show, is closing. And the Broadway League, which represents theater owners and producers, told members on Tuesday that it was opposed to a Times Square casino. In a statement, the league said a casino would risk the industry's stability, though it did not specify how. |
But the industry is by no means speaking with a unified voice. The Actors' Equity Association, the union that represents actors and stage managers, supports the casino bid, presumably because the casino will come with unionized jobs. |
What about other Times Square stakeholders — restaurant owners, for example? Do they worry that a casino with restaurants would hurt their business? |
They appear to have mixed feelings. The local state Senator, Brad Hoylman, told us the Broadway League's opposition amounted to the proposal's death knell. |
But Alan Rosen, the owner of Junior's Cheesecake, which has locations in Times Square and at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, sees only upside, because, he said, gamblers need to eat. |
The would-be casino operators want to deploy surveillance drones in Times Square. Why? |
The developers argue that Times Square risks falling into decline again — that it is dirtier and less safe these days and needs the investment that they can provide by dedicating some of their gambling revenue to the neighborhood. And they've proposed a neighborhood safety plan devised by Bill Bratton, the former New York City police commissioner. |
When I spoke with him, he argued that casinos do not bring additional crime — assuming they have adequate safety plans in place. He also predicted that drones would become an integral component of policing in the years to come, because they give officers "the ability to effectively monitor something from above, rather than being lost in the crowd flow below." |
It's another sunny day, New York, where temperatures are near the low 60s. The evening is clear, with temps around the low 50s. |
In effect until Monday (Diwali). |
Diwali as a school holiday |
Mayor Eric Adams and David Banks, the schools chancellor, announced their support for making Diwali, the South Asian festival of lights, a school holiday in New York City. The bill — introduced by Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar, a Democrat from Queens who is Indian American — would substitute the Diwali holiday for Anniversary Day in June on the school calendar. |
If the bill is passed by the Legislature, that would satisfy a state requirement for 180 days of instruction during each school year. |
It would also satisfy a promise Adams made on Twitter soon after he was elected last year. On Thursday he said a Diwali holiday would be a "long overdue" acknowledgment of Hindu, Sikh, Jain and Buddhist communities. |
"We already have taken a step previously on canceling alternate-side-of-the-street parking during Diwali," the mayor said at a news conference, "but we wanted to go further. We wanted to send a loud and clear message to the countless number of people who acknowledge this period of time of celebration." |
Rajkumar said the change would allow the school system to meet the 180-day mandate set by the state. "People said that there's simply not enough room in the New York City school calendar to have a Diwali school holiday," Rajkumar said at the news conference. "Well, my legislation makes the room." She said Anniversary Day was "an obscure and antiquated day" and was "observed by no one." |
It dates to 1829 and recognized Protestant Sunday schools in general and the Brooklyn Sunday School Union Society in particular. In 1905, the Legislature designated the Thursday in the week after Memorial Day as a holiday for the schools in Brooklyn, and in 1959, it added Queens to the celebration. |
Only students and teachers in Brooklyn and Queens got the day off until 2005, when a new teachers' contract extended it to schools in the other three boroughs. Banks said it was "the perfect example" of a day that could be dropped "for something much more meaningful, much more purposeful and something that I think will have a great deal of relevance for all of young people." |
 | | Anna-Marie Kellen/The Metropolitan Museum of Art |
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Prime Minister Liz Truss left office after the shortest tenure of any prime minister in British history. She will be the last prime minister invited to form a government by Queen Elizabeth II, a footnote that reminded me about a new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition is about the Tudors, but it hinted at the present-day monarchy. |
The two curators behind the exhibition, Dr. Elizabeth Cleland and Dr. Adam Eaker, told me they began laying the groundwork for the show a few months before the Brexit referendum in 2016. They installed it a couple of weeks ago, not long after Queen Elizabeth II's death. |
The Brexit moment at the front end of that timeline prompted them to think about Tudor England's relationship to the rest of Europe. And Elizabeth II's reign suggested parallels to the ways the Tudors shaped an image "that became indelible," as Eaker put it. |
The lavish portraits in the exhibition show how careful the Tudors were in managing the way they were seen. So was Elizabeth II, from the first televised coronation in 1953 and continuing to the first televised funeral of a monarch last month. But those were public events that told little about who she really was. |
"Elizabeth II was someone who, despite spending 70 years on the throne, was in many ways unknown outside her family and her friend group," Eaker told me. "There's pressure on the younger royals to be accessible, to be relevant, to give interviews, to share family photos, but I wonder if that's what people want from a monarch, if they don't crave mystery, more of an enigma." |
The exhibition covers the Tudors' century-plus reign — 118 years, from the ascent of Henry VII in 1485 to the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603 — and will run through Jan. 8. |
I was taking a cab from Midtown to the airport, heading home to San Francisco after a weekslong trip to the city for work. |
At some point, the cabby pulled over suddenly, parked the car and, without saying a word, got out. |
He returned a few minutes later with an ice cream cone for each of us. |
Glad we could get together here. See you on Monday. — J.B. |
| Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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