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OTB HEAD BETS ON VIDEO-LOTTERY TERMINALS

Video-lottery terminals are among the ideas being considered by the new head of the Off-Track Betting corporation.

These terminals – which would require legislative approval – could lead to entertainment complexes in the city created by casino bigs like Steve Wynn and Donald Trump.

“We could do something really out of the box, which instead of talking about pennies, we could be talking about literally billions of dollars, and that would be to bring VLTs into our three teletheaters in New York,” David Cornstein, chairman of the new state-controlled NYC Off-Track Betting Corp., told The Post.

Cornstein, who also did a stint as head of the city OTB under then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 1994, added that the most innovative idea would be to “build a very unique entertainment center . . . that would have a cineplex in it, that would have retail [stores], that might have a hotel associated with it.”

The mega OTB parlors could “employ 5,000 people and really be an attraction to really bring people to an area that people [are] not going to now,” he added, saying they could draw tourists to new parts of the city. “You could get, in my opinion, an upfront fee up to $500 million to a billion dollars” for the development rights.

“This is the right time to do it because the city and state need the money . . . and it could create jobs, which we need,” said Cornstein.

Bloomberg had threatened to shutter the city’s 60 OTB parlors, saying the Big Apple was forced to hand over so much money to the state that it was operating at a deficit. Under the new arrangement, the city will get slightly more than $7 million related to the OTB every year.

maggie.haberman@nypost.com