NEW YORK CITY-It looks like a one-horse race for the contract to develop a video lottery casino at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, with the New York Lottery saying late Tuesday afternoon that it had disqualified two of the three bids submitted on June 29. The disqualification of bids submitted by Penn National Gaming and a consortium of SL Green Realty Corp., Hard Rock International and Clairvest Group—both on grounds that the bidders attempted to negotiate for more favorable terms than those allowed by the RFP—narrows the field to the US-based arm of Malaysian gaming company Genting.

If Genting’s proposal is not approved, the contract to develop a 328,000-square-foot video lottery terminal facility at Aqueduct will be bid out for the sixth time in three years. Should that occur, however, neither SL Green nor Penn National would be eligible for reconsideration, the lottery says.

Both the SL Green-led consortium and Penn National submitted what an SL Green spokesman calls “a suggested list of amendments” along with their proposals. In the case of the SL Green group, these included the right to terminate the memorandum of understanding if all conditions were not met by Dec. 31 of this year, compensation for any VLT facility granted “more favorable tax treatment” within 50 miles of Aqueduct and the right to sublease a portion of the facility.

According to the lottery, Penn National would not agree to advance funds to the New York Racing Association, as required by the MOU, if construction of the Aqueduct casino were to be delayed by more than 30 days. Penn National also wanted to be able to terminate the Aqueduct racino license at any time the company determined that the casino was not profitable to it for four consecutive quarters, and to be able to change the MOU to protect its profits “in light of tax rates and other material factors,” according to the lottery.

“The SL Green/Hard Rock team was willing to move forward, but only with terms that made economic sense,” SL Green’s spokesman tells GlobeSt.com. He adds that in attempting to rectify the issues with previous RFPs for the project, “the state created some new problems.” These were pointed out but not addressed, says the spokesman, and the detailed list of amendments to the MOU were intended as a "good faith" move to correct the memorandum's pitfalls for would-be developers. Calls to a Penn National spokesman were not returned by deadline.