For the past five years, Roc Nation has been fighting to make New York City’s first casino a reality, and this month they’ll learn whether their historical new venture will actually happen. JAY-Z and Roc’s longtime CEO Desiree Perez have been pushing relentlessly to obtain one of three new gaming licenses being given out by the city. The license would allow them to convert Times Square’s 1515 Broadway into a expansive casino and entertainment destination.
As part of the bid, Roc Nation — who is partnering with Caesars Palace and SL Green — has also committed $250 million in community support over the next 10 years. The money will go towards community programs aimed at supporting Broadway, public health, safety and security in Times Square and the surrounding neighborhoods and more. Roc additionally pledged to donate 0.5% percent of the casino’s revenue to the West Side Community Fund, and announced earlier this week that in tandem with Ryan Williams and Cadre will allow local New Yorkers to invest in the casino for a minimum of $500.
With all of this in play, Perez has spent the last five years talking to the Manhattan community about all of these initiatives, some of whom have expressed worry about the congestion and tourism a JAY-Z-helmed casino could bring to an already overstuffed area of the city. Roc Nation will finally learn their fate later this month, with the last public hearing on the project set for Thursday morning (Sept. 11). When asked how Roc Nation is feeling at this precarious moment, Perez tells Billboard over the phone that they’re cautiously optimistic but that, “You just never know.”
“It’s more of trying to make sure that we’re covering all bases and that the right information is out there,” Perez says. Billboard briefly chats with the Roc Nation CEO about the plans for the casino, how they’re handling the pushback and how this will impact the future of New York City.
A pretty consequential decision will made this month in regards to the Times Square casino. What’s the feeling among your team and your collaborators, and what are you hoping to see during the public hearing on September 11?
Well I’m hoping to see between now and September 11 as much as possible from the community and all the work that we’ve done for them to come out and support us.
Roc Nation has always been about cultural influence and community impact. Why did a Times Square casino make sense as the next major project for Roc Nation?
Well, if we go back five years it’s a license that was basically — Albany decided they were gonna approve these three license that was coming to down state New York City. So we knew it was something that was coming to New York and it’s an incredible opportunity. Whomever gets this license ultimately is set to make billions of dollars through the lifetime of the license, and so it’s obviously an incredible financial opportunity.
But then it’s also an opportunity for us when we do any business we always try to touch and impact community as much as we can. So it felt like the right opportunity for us as New Yorkers to go ahead, turn around and say, Ok, well these are the different projects. I mean, imagine if we have access to this kind of capital and this kind of opportunity what we could do for the community.
The amount of money you’re pledging to donate is truly staggering. How did this comprehensive list of initiatives come together?
Through different meetings with the community boards. We went in and did town halls, if you will, and spoke to the community and heard what their needs were. So we took a lot of feedback from them including not just the $250 million that we’re giving back in direct community investment, but also the .5 percent in perpetuity of the license being there.
So that came directly from the people. When they came back with their concerns, we turned around and said, “OK, so who’s the right partner for us to partner with on security? Who’s the right partner for LGBTQ initiatives? Who’s the right partner for mental health?” We found partners throughout and then just bucketed the amounts that we needed by having conversations with the professionals.
On that note, the plan includes over $83 million for cameras, extra patrols, and security upgrades. Times Square already has one of the highest police presences in the city and the country, with mixed results — why will your initiatives work better than what’s already in place?
I don’t know that it’d work better, I think it will enhance what’s there. I think it also is not just for Times Square, we’ve actually expanded this to hit the community in our surrounding areas. So I think we’re going above and beyond. It’s not just where the casino is. We’re gonna be touching most of the Hell’s Kitchen area and it’s designed so that the neighbors, the people living near [the casino] can feel safer. Again, it’s more of an augmentation, we’re working with an ex-NYPD commissioner to come up with these plans. So it’s meant to enhance what already exists.
The partnership with Ryan Williams and Cadre is unique — allowing New Yorkers to invest in the casino for as little as $500. How do you see this shifting the dynamics of wealth and ownership in the city?
It’s just us putting ourselves in our own shoes. We are the people and that’s how we view ourselves. We see ourselves more like community people and what the community needs. In this case, why can’t someone who lives nearby or in The Bronx or somewhere in New York City, they wanna invest in this project, they hear how much money this is gonna make — it stands to make money the minute it opens it’s not like there is a loss here — how do we get that to the people? Think of it as one fund, and whatever money everyone deposits into this goes into the investment of the casino.
So [the Cadre partnership] is something that we thought would be good for what we are about: the people. It doesn’t have to just be wealthy people that are on Wall Street or Blackstone — those are great — and Goldman Sachs or whatever. There are people who don’t have enough money to be part of any type of investment fund, so this is the ability to let just regular New Yorkers be part of this.
There seems to be good handful of New Yorkers against the Casino. You touched on how you spoke to Manhattan residents yourself and that there was overwhelming support for the project. How are you making sure that all the locals know about these opportunities that are in place?
I don’t think that we have community pushback. What we have is honestly one pushback which is Shubert. The Shubert Organization owns 17 of the 41 theaters on Broadway, so he’s had a very nice situation for a while, for over 100 years, and his organization owns the organizations that are protesting against the casino, because they don’t wanna share. They think somehow this is gonna cannibalize their business, which we disagree with totally.
They’re the ones with that kind of movement, but I don’t believe that the actual human beings that live in the buildings — not the rich people that own the theaters — are the ones that are against the casino. We do have our pulse in the community, and we have been talking to the communities, and they’re all very supportive or neutral. They know it’s coming to New York. The way we’ve said it is, “Guys, it’s coming to New York. If we get this license and we’re not talking to you and we don’t know what we want, then we can’t do anything about anything.”
So I think any license that’s granted in New York City should come with the responsibility of making sure they are taking the community into consideration. Public officials they give licenses out, they have so much power but they’re there for a certain term. They go, and then people stay living in the same buildings for 25 years, and they get effected by all of these decisions. So it really should be about knocking on doors and talking to people. Sometimes what that means is you’re hearing things that — I had someone talk to us about things you would normally talk to the mayor about! But it was interesting… It’s about hearing them out and figuring out how much we can allocate to each one of their concerns.
Yeah, I mean you cast a wide net here. You have student debt relief, mental health outreach, arts education opportunities. If you get approved, how will you ensure accountability and transparency in delivering these benefits to the community?
The way we put it in our application is we made our license contingent upon us providing and writing these checks. For example, for the LGBTQ initiative, we’re providing five million dollars to Callen-Lorde. We’re just putting the money in their hands and they’ve agreed with us. We have an agreement with them in writing about what they are going to do with that money. So that’s how we’ve done it with each one of these, and the beauty is, let’s say we get the license tomorrow, the day after we’re paying. We don’t have to build out our casino or be in business in order to pay the money. It would be the quickest money to the ground for the community.
What would you say to residents who are worried about this casino?
If the license is granted to us — and I understand your concerns because I’ve been hearing them for the past four or five years from different people — if anyone has any concerns we are going to be the best partner by far that you could ever have. Because we’re gonna care, not just for today, we’re gonna care for the lifetime that we’re there. Those are the kind of partners that we are. If we do get the license we’d like to work with you and put your concerns at ease as much as we can.
Honestly, one thing I’d like to say is with everything that’s going on with the political climate, I think it’s more important than ever that private business get in touch with the community and work with each other. There’s a lot of these organizations losing grants and losing support because government is just not giving what it was giving. It’s time for private businesses to step up and do what’s right for the community and that’s what we’re going to be.