Racing at Yonkers Raceway still moves city budgets, school funding and hundreds of local jobs. Here is where Empire City money goes and what could change.
By Dana R. | Local government and civic finance writer, 9 years covering Hudson Valley budgets.
Every spring, the same ritual plays out at City Hall. The mayor presents a proposed budget, the council squints at the gap between what Yonkers collects and what it needs, and somebody asks Albany for more state aid. We have watched that budget saga repeat for years, and one line item keeps showing up in the background: the money that flows from the 100-plus acres along Central Park Avenue where Yonkers Raceway and Empire City Casino sit.
It is easy to treat the track as scenery. Residents drive past it, argue about it at council meetings, and mostly assume it either pays for plenty or pays for little. The truth is more specific than either camp admits. With the future of the site unsettled, it is worth laying out what that money actually does.
Where the Empire City money lands
Start with the basic structure. Yonkers does not collect casino revenue the way a casino town collects a gate fee. The state licenses the video lottery terminals, takes the largest cut of net machine revenue, and then sends a portion back to the host city. In Yonkers, that host share goes into the general fund, the same pot that pays for police overtime, sanitation routes, pothole crews and a chunk of the school district’s local contribution.
That last part matters. Yonkers schools lean hard on state aid, and the city’s own contribution is stretched thin every year. Any dollar that arrives from the track is a dollar the council does not have to find by raising the property tax levy. For a homeowner in Northwest Yonkers or Crestwood, that is not abstract. It is the difference between a flat bill and a bump.
Then there is the racing itself. Live standardbred racing at Yonkers Raceway, the trotters and pacers that run under the lights, rests on an agreement with the horsemen that carries through 2028, according to a joint statement from the Standardbred Owners Association and MGM Yonkers. Racing draws less money than the machines do. But it supports trainers, drivers, grooms, farriers, feed suppliers and the people who run the grandstand on race nights. Those paychecks get spent in Yonkers.
The comeback of the full racing calendar, which the paper covered when racing returned after the pandemic shutdown, mattered for exactly this reason. Racing days are job days.
The jobs side of the ledger
Employment numbers at the complex get thrown around loosely at public hearings, so it helps to be careful. The property employs well over a thousand people: gaming floor staff, dealers on the electronic tables, food and beverage workers, security, maintenance, marketing and management. Union membership is high. That means wages and benefits that sit above what comparable retail or hospitality work pays in Westchester.
Those are the jobs a regional construction and trades council had in mind when it warned that Empire City’s future is unclear with new casinos planned in Queens and the Bronx. The concern is simple. If a bigger, fuller-service casino opens twenty minutes down the Deegan, some of the customers who now drive to Yonkers will go elsewhere. The revenue share follows them.
The worry got sharper after MGM pulled its bid for a full downstate casino license. Reporting at the time noted Mayor Spano’s call for an investigation, which shows how much the city had pinned on the expansion. A full license would have meant live table games, a larger hotel, more construction work and a bigger host payment. Without it, Yonkers keeps what it has and loses the growth it planned around.
This is the part residents deserve to hear plainly. The city did not just lose a project. It lost a revenue forecast.
How the wider New York gaming market is shifting
None of this is happening in isolation. Residents ask the same question at neighbourhood meetings now: if the physical venues are in flux, where is the action actually going? A lot of it is moving to phones. New York already runs one of the largest regulated mobile sports wagering markets in the country, and many locals weigh a night at a physical venue against signing up for an online account.
That comparison is worth understanding even if you never place a bet, because it shapes where tax dollars end up. Online wagering revenue is taxed at the state level and does not come with a host-city payment the way a physical VLT floor does. For anyone trying to follow how that side of the business works, from licensing to payment options, the esports.gg guide lays out the basics in plain language. The takeaway for a budget watcher is narrow but real: a dollar spent online is a dollar the local general fund is far less likely to see.
Gambling carries risk. Play responsibly and only with money you can afford to lose; help is available through BeGambleAware.
What this means for the next budget
So where does that leave a city that counts on this money? Three things stand out.
First, the host payment is not guaranteed to grow. Several years of budget planning assumed expansion would lift it. With the license bid gone, finance staff have to plan around flat or declining numbers, and that is a very different spreadsheet.
Second, racing steadies the whole operation, and almost nobody talks about it. The horsemen’s agreement through 2028 gives the track a floor of activity regardless of what happens on the casino side. Not glamorous. But it keeps a few hundred paychecks and a lot of supply contracts in the neighbourhood.
Third, the school budget is where a revenue shortfall would hurt first. The council can trim a department. It cannot easily trim a classroom, so the pressure lands on the property tax levy once outside money shrinks.
None of that is a prediction of collapse. Empire City remains profitable, and the track is not going anywhere soon. But a city that knows its biggest entertainment employer faces new competition should be building a cushion now, not after the next lean spring.
Questions residents keep asking
Does Yonkers get a share of casino money? Yes. The state licenses the machines and keeps most of the net revenue, then returns a host-community share to the city. That money goes into the general fund, which pays for city services and helps cover the local contribution to schools.
How many jobs depend on the track and casino? Well over a thousand people work on the property directly, with additional work for racing staff, trainers, drivers and local suppliers. Exact totals shift with seasons and staffing, so ask the operator or the city for current figures before quoting any number.
Will racing continue at Yonkers Raceway? The agreement between the horsemen and MGM Yonkers runs through 2028. That gives the track a stable runway, though anything beyond that date would need a new deal and approval from the state gaming regulator.
Why did the casino expansion matter so much to the city? A full license would have added live table games, a larger hotel and construction work, all of which would have raised the host payment and the job count. Losing the bid removed that growth from city forecasts.
The takeaway
Yonkers does not need Empire City to thrive in order to function, but it has built a lot of its comfort around it. The smart reading of the last year is not panic. City leaders and residents should stop treating the track’s contribution as permanent background noise and start budgeting like it could change. The next fight at City Hall will not be about whether the money exists. It will be about what happens the year it does not.