During the fifth hour of Thursday night’s public hearing for residents to comment on the $11.1 billion Freedom Plaza casino proposal for the East Side of Manhattan, Ila Eckhoff posed the rhetorical question cutting to the heart of the matter.
“Would you want a casino a block away from where you live?”
While Eckhoff — a Murray Hill resident close to where the casino, apartments, museum, and park space would all be developed — and others do not want to see Freedom Plaza built, there was plenty of support from the 140 people who spoke at Scandinavia House over the course of the afternoon and into the evening…