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I run Sardi’s, a restaurant that has been synonymous with Broadway and the theater world for more than a century. It is a role I relish and a job that gives me great pride.
Our walls are famously adorned with more than 1,000 caricatures of stars who have shone brightly in the footlights, going as far back as 1927. (The very first, by the way, was of a bandleader and composer named Ted Healy, who is credited with bringing together the original Three Stooges. More recent portrait subjects include Cate Blanchett, Samuel L. Jackson, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Elizabeth Moss.)
As the site of much Opening Night joy and heartbreak over decades, Sardi’s is part of the heartbeat of Broadway.
That heartbeat abruptly stopped with the onset of the pandemic. Sardi’s closed on March 13, 2020 and would remain shuttered for 648 excruciating days. I am still haunted by the ghostly vision of empty streets, theaters and businesses.
In recent months, audiences have started to return to live performances, workers to offices and diners to restaurants. Watching the unique ecosystem of Broadway surge back to life has filled me with hope for the future.
The prospect of a casino in Times Square, however, fills me with dread.
Broadway’s 41 theaters and their shows draw approximately 40,000 visitors per day — and nearly twice that on days of matinee performances.
Sardi’s restaurant in the Theater District in Manhattan is pictured last June. (Shutterstock)
Though Sardi’s may be the most famous Broadway restaurant, the success of all the area’s restaurants — many of them small businesses — are essential to the success of Broadway’s recovery.
After all, these restaurants are where families gather in joyful, pre-theater anticipation, where dates begin and where dramas and musicals are discussed over dessert and a nightcap after the curtain comes down. “Dinner and a show” are part of the lexicon of practically every New Yorker and visitor.
No matter how much emphasis promoters try to place on glitz and glamour, a casino in Times Square has the potential to jeopardize the character of the theater district and the fate of its restaurants.
There are significant reasons why most casinos in the United States aren’t located in the middle of heavily populated areas (and certainly not in an area as heavily populated as Times Square). For one thing, casinos clearly bring the most benefit to areas where there are no existing businesses to devour. Philadelphia’s two casinos, for example, are located on the city’s outskirts, surrounded by parking lots. Here in New York, the two existing “racinos” are out at Aqueduct and Yonkers racetracks.
In general (and Las Vegas aside), U.S. casinos don’t attract tourists, they attract local gamblers. To succeed, a Times Square casino would have to draw thousands of gamblers a day to an already congested area that has gone to great lengths to facilitate pedestrian-friendly traffic.
Further, casinos don’t drive customers to neighboring businesses the way theaters do. By design, casinos are self-contained, with their own restaurants and shops to keep gamblers in the casino.
Putting a casino in the heart of the city may make it easier for gamblers to get to the slot machines and craps tables, but it won’t make life easier for the rest of us. (I would also suggest, given the depressing reality that the house usually wins, that ultimately an easy-to-access casino won’t make life any easier for gamblers either.)
Supporters of a Times Square casino point to the good-paying jobs it would generate. We are all in favor of creating good jobs, but let’s be clear: Those jobs will be created no matter where a city casino is eventually located. They simply are not dependent on a casino being built specifically in Times Square.
When I began working at Sardi’s in 1974, New York was down on its luck, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. This was the decade of the infamous Daily News front-page headline: “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” Back then, Times Square had become a bleak symbol of the city’s decay.
In the nearly five decades since the late Vincent Sardi gave me a job as an expediter, taking orders from the waiters and disseminating them to the different cooking stations, I have seen our Broadway icon weather numerous storms. Other local bistros, cafés and eateries, many of them very fine indeed, were not as lucky or resilient.
All restaurateurs understand that, even in the best of times, the odds of success are against them. But as we continue to get back on our feet in what is hopefully the aftermath of COVID, the last thing we need is having to go against a house that plays with marked cards. And that’s what the prospect of a casino in Times Square feels like.
Klimavicius is the owner of Sardi’s.
Copyright © 2023, New York Daily News

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