Flying cars? The world’s largest crypto trading floor in Lower Manhattan? A casino and resort within eyeline of the stolid gaze of the Statue of Liberty? If it sounds like the future that’s because it is, or, at least, it might be if Jason Ader and Universal Entertainment Corporation get their way.
It is well known that three casino licenses are likely to be granted for downstate New York, allowing that region – which includes the Big Apple – to build its first ever casinos. The state issued a request for information for what are possibly the three most coveted casino licenses in American history. Submissions were accepted last week.
UE Resorts International, a subsidiary of Japan-based Universal Entertainment – with finance maven Jason Ader as a major shareholder and American point man – have stepped into the fray to propose Mirai (Japanese, ‘future’), the world’s "first metaverse casino," specifically designed for what the world will be, not for what it is.
“If you’re conceiving of something in 2021, it’s for what the world will look like in 10 years, not two years,” said Ader when we talked to him earlier this week.
Accordingly, Mirai will have features heretofore unseen in integrated resort and casino design: electronic flying car technology is rapidly advancing, so why not have New York’s first carport? Cryptocurrencies will continue to grow at an astronomical rate, so why not have a trading floor which establishes New York as the global center of crypto? The city has marquee events every year (Fleet Week, Fashion Week, the UN General Assembly), so why not have a space that accommodates the significant traffic these events draw? And online gaming and esports are poised to overtake land-based operators, so why not design a casino more in line with this direction? The casino of the future.
It’s not an easy proposition to behold in the mind’s eye, let alone to shepherd into reality. Ader and UE Resorts want it to be completed by 2026 but he concedes that it may take longer. (That’s assuming they even win one of the three licenses.) Building big in New York City is never without contention and controversy, as the developers of the West Side’s Hudson Yards recently discovered. Architectural renderings for this new project place the complex on the edge of the Financial District, atop what is possibly landfill.
Bluntly put, there is a need to see if New Yorkers are receptive to this vision.
“The view of Universal right now,” said Ader, “is to put forward their design and then really spend the next part of the process listening to the politicians and the community on what their needs are and where their desired locations are. We want to work around the community needs as opposed to building a project and forcing a location that may work best for the company.”
Still, New York rewards the bold, and, after a troubling few years, Ader feels that Mirai may be just the thing the city needs to regain its mojo.
He wants to build “a facility and infrastructure that will bring people back to New York from around the world. This is a city whose tourism and economic conditions have suffered as a result of the pandemic, and Universal hopes to be part of the skyline in a way that brings New York back to its position as the number tourist destination for leisure-based travel.”
