On Thursday, December 11 in Trenton, New Jersey, a State Assembly gaming committee voted 4-1 in favour of releasing a bill that could lead to the study of potential new casino in Bergen County, home to the Meadowlands Racetrack.
According to a report on nj.com, the resolution will see a commission assembled in order to study the state’s casino industry as it moves into the future.
The nj.com article explains that the state is almost three years into Governor Chris Christie’s five-year plan to do everything possible to bolster the Atlantic City’s New Jersey casino monopoly. The report states that AC’s east coast casino monopoly is now gone, blown apart by massive gaming expansion in neighbouring states, specifically along New Jersey’s borders. The article has quoted Gov. Christie as saying this past summer that the state is “two and a half years into a five-year plan” and that he’s “not happy with the result at the moment.” In 2012, the New Jersey casino industry made $3-billion, which is 40 per cent less than it hauled in during its peak in 2006.
As an article by northjersey.com explains, Assemblyman Ruben Ramos referred to the New Jersey casino industry as a billion-dollar-a-year industry, and has said that the state “can’t stick [its] head in the sand any longer” in regard to introducing casino gaming to the rest of New Jersey.
Meadowlands Racetrack operator Jeff Gural has made his position on the New Jersey gaming landscape abundantly clear. He stated as recently as this past summer that he thinks casino gaming will ultimately be introduced to the Meadowlands.
(With files from nj.com and northjersey.com)