The hedge fund billionaire aiming to be king of Queens
Steve Cohen already owns the Mets baseball team and now wants to build one of New York’s first casinos. But that has drawn him into local politics
Throughout 2020, Tom Grech could only watch as the borough of Queens inched towards a financial and human calamity. Sirens wailed day and night as ambulances shuttled patients to Elmhurst Hospital, ground zero for the pandemic in New York.
Nearby, the dead piled up so rapidly that a refrigerator stored dozens of bodies outside a funeral home. Grech, the president and chief executive of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, stood helpless as the relentless march of Covid cases in his working-class borough pushed scores of local businesses towards financial ruin.
Into this unfolding catastrophe stepped Steve Cohen. The hedge fund billionaire, who had just acquired control of the New York Mets baseball team in a $2.4bn deal, was not yet a household name in the diverse district that’s home to New York’s two airports and scores of immigrant communities.
Early in 2021, Cohen wrote Grech a cheque for $15mn, instructing him to hand out money to hundreds of business owners with no strings attached. It was a sum that might have paid for the annual salaries of one or two portfolio managers at the Manhattan offices of Cohen’s Point72 hedge fund. But it went a long way in Queens.
“For a number of months, I was like Santa Claus giving money out to people,” says Grech. “Courtesy of Steve.”
The cheque was the first move in what would become a multiyear campaign to win hearts and minds in the borough, as Cohen quietly shifted his energy and vast resources to building a business empire there.
While his initial focus was on turning round the perennially underachieving Mets, his attention is now also set on a more lucrative and ambitious endeavour: winning one of New York City’s first casino licenses.
His planned gambling and entertainment mecca, known as Metropolitan Park, is to be developed in conjunction with Hard Rock Entertainment and sited in what loosely served as the desolate “valley of ashes” in The Great Gatsby. While Citi Field, the Mets’ stadium, is only a home-run hit away from Flushing Bay, it is encircled by so many highways that the criss-crossing ramps obstruct most views of the water.
The project will be a test of whether Cohen can succeed in a different realm, bending New York’s fractious politics to his will, in the way that Ken Griffin, another hedge fund star, has managed to do in Chicago and now Miami.
Entities affiliated with Cohen have so far spent about $9mn on lobbying costs associated with the bid, according to an analysis of regulatory filings. Last year, one of the companies he controls spent more on lobbying than any other single firm in New York, a city teeming with lobbyists.
He has deployed a small army of advisers to win support from elected officials, and disbursed thousands of dollars on a campaign that has included newspaper and social media ads.
Then there is the philanthropy. While Wall Street’s top financiers are often high-profile donors, even those who grew up in Queens — JPMorgan Chase boss Jamie Dimon, for instance, or fellow hedge fund manager John Paulson — tend to distribute their largesse elsewhere.
“I’ve been in government for 22 years and I have never met a billionaire who’s done more for Queens,” says Donovan Richards, the borough president. “It’s easy to invest in the conservancy for Central Park, or the museum of whatever. Billionaires do that everyday,” he adds. “What differentiates Steve Cohen is that he’s willing to do it in an outer borough.”
To a large extent, the campaign is working, as Cohen has managed to persuade reluctant local officials over the past few years to back the project. But some residents are still opposed to having a casino nearby. The Fed-Up Coalition, a grassroots organisation made up of local environmental and community activists, has been the most co-ordinated and vocal opponent.
“Any billionaire running over a community like this and who’s able to dangle money over them is horrible,” says Bill Bruno, a member of the group’s steering committee. “But a billionaire with his track record is even worse,” he adds, referring to Cohen’s run-ins with regulators during his hedge fund career.
“The benefits [of the project] are somewhat illusory, while most of the money’s going to go to Steve Cohen.”
When Cohen bought the Mets, a team he had supported since childhood, it marked a new era for one of Wall Street’s wealthiest and most closely followed figures.
The financier known as the hedge fund king had just emerged from a multiyear entanglement with state and federal regulatory authorities, which had threatened to derail his hedge fund business and ultimately put one of his managers behind bars.
SAC Capital Advisors, the forerunner of Point72, pleaded guilty to insider trading charges in 2013 and later paid a $1.8bn penalty to settle them. Cohen was never charged with insider trading, but reached an agreement with regulators in 2016 in which he neither admitted nor denied allegations of failing to supervise one of the employees found guilty of insider trading. He began managing client funds again in 2018.
Taking control of the Mets, which had long languished in the shadow of the more illustrious New York Yankees, allowed Cohen to present himself as a working-class kid made good, rather than a ruthless hedge fund manager at odds with securities regulators.
He has spent billions of dollars on the Mets over the past five years — including a league record $765mn to land star hitter Juan Soto — and soon became known among fans as Uncle Steve, a legend among truck drivers and accountants alike.
Cohen is now bidding for one of the three casino licenses that New York will issue this year, and if he is successful, he could mint an entirely new fortune for himself.
“He’s very comfortable spending money to get his projects done,” said Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University, adding that Cohen had also spent effectively. “For a guy who lives in Connecticut, he’s done a great job figuring out New York.”
New York had long kept casinos featuring live games like blackjack and roulette away from the city, forcing New Yorkers to travel upstate or to resorts like Atlantic City or Foxwoods in neighbouring states.
That changed in 2022, when the state budget included plans to hand out up to three licences for the city and surrounding area as a way to boost tax revenues. Interested bidders have mounted unofficial campaigns over the past few years, but the real race has only recently officially begun, with Cohen and seven other groups submitting bids to the state’s gaming commission in late June.
Cohen and Hard Rock are facing off against casino heavyweights such as MGM Resorts, Bally’s Corporation and Caesars Entertainment, and the eventual winners are expected to pull in billions of dollars.
The Cohen project forecasts gross revenue of $3.2bn in its first year, with $1.5bn of that from slot machines alone. By year 10, a cumulative $38bn will have rolled in.
The exact ownership split between Cohen and Hard Rock has not been disclosed, and sections from their application that might include those details have been redacted. A spokesperson for Cohen declined to say how much he stands to benefit financially.
While the casino would be the development’s “economic engine”, the $8bn complex next to Citi Field would also include a concert venue, a hotel, a food hall and a new park.
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“The biggest complaint from my fans is when they come to a game, there’s nothing to do at the stadium,” Cohen said in an interview at a conference in June. “This is a real opportunity to transform the neighbourhood,” he added, “and do something for Queens and the city that’s nothing that anyone has done before.”
The project, he says, is an extension of his ownership of the Mets, which he has previously described as a “civic responsibility”.
Cohen declined to be interviewed for this piece, but those who know him say his energy remains undiminished. “He’s hyper-focused,” says one Wall Street executive who worked with him closely for years. “He uses his money to bully and get what he wants.” While Cohen’s sharpest tendencies have softened over the years, some traits have remained. “He always wants to win,” the executive adds. “That hasn’t changed.”
In June, at an event to promote local businesses at Citi Field, Michael Sullivan glad-handed local officials and residents. They treated him like a hometown celebrity as he posed for photos and gave a television interview.
“The reason we’ve come as far as we have is we stand on the shoulders of our local community boards, our local churches, our Mets fans,” said Sullivan, who is chief of staff for Point72 and goes by the name Sully, on the edge of the crowd. “It was important to Steve that we did this right and listened to the community,” he told the FT before rushing away for another photo.
Sullivan heads the battalion of lobbyists and publicists recruited by Cohen to drum up support for the casino proposals. He and his lieutenants have knocked on 44,000 doors to convince the community that having a casino in their backyard will benefit the neighbourhood.
Cohen hosted them for games at Citi Field, but also met them at local restaurants and bakeries. “Queens has some incredibly diverse communities where people have come from all over the world to settle in New York and pursue the American dream,” says one executive from Queens who runs a political consulting firm. “Understanding that tapestry is very difficult.”
“I don’t think there’s a kitchen table that [Cohen] hasn’t sat at in Queens,” says Richards, the borough president. “There was a trust built with people who, you have to understand, would never trust a billionaire. This is AOC’s backyard,” he adds, referring to the outspoken left-wing congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has said very little in public about the proposals.
But another Democratic lawmaker, state senator and one-time mayoral hopeful Jessica Ramos, has been among the most vocal and thorniest opponents for Cohen. “There’s a predatory nature to the casino business model,” she says over lunch in Astoria, a neighbourhood in Queens.
“He’s selling a lot of my small businesses on this fictitious multiplier effect that we just don’t see,” she adds, asking: “Why should we reward a bad actor with our land and the ability to make money off our people?” The project responded by pointing out that “unions, Community Boards, small businesses and our neighbours all overwhelmingly support Metropolitan Park.”
To be eligible to submit a bid for the area next to Citi Field stadium, which is technically leased parkland, Cohen needed the state legislature in Albany to rezone the 50-acre site.
Ramos refused to introduce the necessary legislation. But her colleague John Liu, a supporter of the project whose district includes a small portion of the area, stepped in and in May, the legislature passed the bill — removing the final obstacle to the project just weeks before bids were due.
“My reservations still stand,” says Liu. “I’m not a fan of gambling, casinos or other types . . . but the reality is that there will be three casinos opening in the vicinity of New York City. And this project has had the most robust community outreach and buy-in.”
Cohen has vowed to spend about $1.8bn on projects to benefit the community, including 25 acres of new parkland and improvements to the subway station that brings trains from Manhattan. Local officials say they have long begged for funds to improve such sites, but have never been able to obtain them.
He has also bolstered his case with a list of other benefits: promises for tens of thousands of jobs, hundreds of affordable housing units and a $163mn fund that will give out grants to non-profit organisations.
“I’m fully cognisant that these improvements — which I’ve been waiting for my entire life — wouldn’t be realised without some kind of economic boost,” concludes Liu. “And that’s what the casino and hotel accommodation provides.”
Last year, the foundation Cohen runs with his wife Alex donated $116mn to LaGuardia Community College, the largest-ever gift to such a college in the US. Since its launch in 2001, the foundation has donated more than $185mn to non-profit organisations and projects throughout Queens.
“A dollar goes a lot further in Queens than it does in Manhattan, and he’s figured that out,” says Moss, the NYU professor. “The benefit of Queens is that it’s an undernourished place in terms of philanthropy, and Cohen’s finding a way to fill that gap.”
The eight casino proposals will be judged by local and state representatives before a state-level board chooses up to three winning bids, a process that should be completed by December.
“There can only be one king of Queens, and the king has a vote on the project,” says Richards, referring to his own role on the selection committee. “But hey, if he’s going to give Queens another $1bn for something else, he can take the title.”
Despite the lobbying and heavy investment, Cohen is by no means a shoo-in. At least two of his rivals have the advantage of operating racinos — horseracing tracks that also offer virtual lottery games — while he is likely to encounter protesters at two further public meetings scheduled for the coming weeks.
Until the winners are announced, Cohen will stay busy. He will need to steer Point72 through financial markets strewn with trade policy gyrations. He will also be dutifully attending Mets games — the team is expected to squeak into the play-offs, barring a late-season collapse — leading up to the World Series in October.
“I’m relentless, I’m hard-wired, I just don’t give up,” Cohen said at a hedge fund conference earlier this year, in perhaps the most candid rationale he has given for his decision to tackle another colossal project. “I’m just tenacious. I can’t help it.”
Today, Ramos remains the only prominent local official still adamantly against the project. She says that having previously courted her, Cohen refused to shake her hand at the first game of the 2024 season, before she publicly said she would not back the project.
“The thing about Steve Cohen is not just that he’s a billionaire,” she says. “He wants a licence to print money. Twenty billion dollars just isn’t enough.”