The wacky world of Glenn Straub; New York rescuer for DFS

Instead of hassling Stockton University over ownership of the Showboat (and losing), perhaps Glenn Straub should have been developing a long-range plan for heating Revel through the winter, so that the pipes don’t freeze and burst. His solution? Bring in boilers as a temporary solution. The problem? The hot water from the boilers would have to be run through equipment that ACR Energy Partners says it owns. Many’s the time we’ve heard that an end to Straub’s troubles with ACR was just around the corner, yet here we are again. Meanwhile, Straub’s plans for Revel continue to pinball between “a sprawling subterranean horse-stable, a Syrian refugee camp, a cancer-research center, ziplines, a university, a water park and a casino-hotel.” In addition to the indoor water park, Revel will sprout a rollercoaster, to give those Syrian refugees a diversion from their diaspora perhaps. The timeline of reopening Revel has, by the way, been pushed back significantly, into mid-2017, two years behind Straub’s initial deadline.

What’s more, Polo North Country Club is being sued for $1 million in past-due energy costs by Bank of New York Mellon. ACR is keeping power flowing — under duress — to Revel’s fire alarms, elevators and aircraft beacon. (Straub sacked the engineers who oversaw the fire-safety systems, earning him a fine from Atlantic City. Apparently their misdeed was to be unionized.) The alleged arrearage involves an escrow account Straub set up to pay for those limited services. Straub, for his part, says ACR is overbilling him. He may soon have to take his fight to a different front, since ACR is under threat of foreclosure by its underwriter.

In a blatant grab for someone else’s property, Straub claims the Showboat (still titled to Stockton) is “my building” and he’s going to sue Stockton to get its excess hot and cold water. (Eventually, he hopes to turn the ‘Boat into an assisted-living facility, although that idea will fare no better with party pooper Trump Entertainment Resorts than the Stockton campus TER blocked.) Dismissing Bart Blatstein‘s recent, $23 million purchase agreement as “a joke,” Straub asserted that because he has $26 million in escrow to cover the purchase, the Showboat is his, no matter what the courts have said.

Straub waved a white flag at the puppeteer pulling TER’s strings, Carl Icahn, saying, “You can’t win against them [people like Icahn], so work with them. They’re just that good.” He did hold fast to his proposal to maintain Bader Field as a working airport, into which he would ferry 13,000 passengers a month from high-roller markets like Columbus, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, which — last time we looked, all had state-of-the-art casinos.

* Having lost its motion for a temporary restraining order, FanDuel is (at least temporarily) quitting the New York market. DraftKings is staying on, in defiance of state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, whose bill of particulars against DFS sites is quite daunting. DraftKings claims Schneiderman’s office promised not to enforce its cease-and-desist order. (The AG denies promising any such thing.) As though it were not sufficiently obnoxious already, FanDuel shamelessly exploits the betting lines of Las Vegas sports books to coach its customers.

Attempting to come to the rescue of DFS is Empire State Sen. Michael Ranzenhofer (R, below). His new bill would make DFS a game of skill by simply declaring it to be so, calling them “fantasy or simulated sports games or educational games or contests.” “Time and time again, New York has stood in the way, whether by over-regulation or outright banning, of activities that are legal and enjoyed in most states across the country,” Ranzenhofer said. His bill would allow DraftKings and FanDuel to continue to act with impunity, unlike a parallel bill introduced by state Rep. Felix Ortiz (D, below) that would subject DFS to regulation.

Ranzenhofer predicts that his bill will have broad, bipartisan support: “This is a very populist issue that the residents want to engage in … This will remove any shadow of doubt from anyone’s interpretation.” He added that he doesn’t play DFS and is reacting to what he sees as a regulatory overreach on Schneiderman’s part. “It’s just once again. New York shouldn’t have Uber, shouldn’t have mixed martial arts, or sports betting. When all this commerce and activities is allowed in many other states, it just seems like one issue after another in New York,” he wailed, implying that DFS is sports betting, which would definitely put it out of bounds. But there are 750,000 DFS-playing New Yorkers who would agree with him, including everyone who has a shrine to Rex Ryan in his bedroom.

Last weekend, Schneiderman clarified that his beef is not with DFS itself but with its gray-area status. “We’re saying that to have a truly level playing field,” he said in a radio interview, “any type of gambling that wants to operate in New York has to have an exemption the same way the horse guys got it, the same way the casino people got it.”