Swanky Guastavino’s venue illegally seized a public plaza for a decade, charging up to $300,000 per event, a new lawsuit claims.
Page F1From§Eachthe coffee break edition — 31 August 2026
NYC venue charges $300K to rent a public plaza as Dems move to cut casino's 72% tax rate
As it ran on the front
Two filings this week, same city, same season. One is a lawsuit alleging a private venue operator built an exclusive business on a public plaza under a landmark bridge, charging up to $300,000 an event, with enforcers named in the suit keeping the public off land the public owns. The other is a coalition of state Democrats asking the governor to block a 72 percent tax rate on New York City's first full casino, on the grounds that the rate is too high to be viable.
Let's reconcile those two documents the way you'd reconcile any two filings: what's being protected, and from whom. In the plaza case, the asset in question is public. In the casino case, the asset in question is the tax revenue on a private gaming license, also, functionally, public money, since it's the state's cut. In the plaza case, the public is the party being kept out, per the suit's own allegations, by hired enforcers. In the casino case, the public is the party the 72 percent rate is meant to benefit, and that's the rate a group of elected Democrats is now working to lower.…
…(cont) I want to be precise about what these two stories share, because it isn't ideology, and it isn't even the same industry. What they share is direction: public asset, private access, at a markup. $300,000 a night is what the plaza suit alleges the public is currently priced out of. 72 percent is what the casino's operators are currently priced into, and are asking to have reduced. Neither number moved because a citizen asked it to move.
None of this requires believing anyone did anything unlawful, hon. The plaza matter is, again, an allegation in a filed suit, and the casino tax rate is a matter of ongoing legislative advocacy, both entirely normal processes on paper. But when you lay the two ledgers side by side, the pattern is that public land and public tax revenue both moved toward private balance sheets the same week, through entirely separate, entirely legal channels, and neither channel required a public vote.
“Same borough, same season: a private outfit fences off the plaza under the bridge for $300,000-a-night parties, and the Dems in Albany scramble to knock down a 72% bite on the casino's take. Public space gets sold off, the house's cut gets protected, and you get to guess whose interests these people actually work for.”
“The plaza license is a standard revenue arrangement approved through normal channels, and as for the casino tax rate, 72% would be the highest in the country, which is a business viability question, not a — I mean, yes it does mean more money for the state, that's actually the argument for lowering it, so.”
The receipts
"The governor's office has to step in and resolve this issue. The Gaming Commission falls under the auspices of the governor."
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.