Albany, N.Y. — Mitchell Grossinger Etess told a state panel here Tuesday that he always uses his middle name for business.

Never, he said, had the practice seemed more appropriate.

Etess, the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority’s chief executive officer, spent a good part of his youth at Grossinger’s, the famed Catskills hotel his family owned for more than 75 years, a span that included the Borscht Belt’s reign as a leading vacation playground.

The Concord, another Catskills icon, thrived then, too. But decades later, the Catskills hit the skids, and eventually the hotels came tumbling down.

“I’ve seen the decline in the town I grew up in,” Etess said, referring to Liberty, N.Y. “The extent of the decay is staggering.”

Enter Mohegan Sun at the Concord, the $500 million resort casino project the Mohegan gaming authority has proposed in conjunction with Louis Cappelli, the Westchester County, N.Y., builder who’s been trying to redevelop the Grossinger’s and Concord properties since acquiring them in the 1990s.

Etess told the New York Gaming Facility Location Board that the Mohegan Sun project can restore Sullivan County and the Catskills to their former glory, a stated purpose of gaming legislation aimed at triggering upstate economic development.

But, Etess said, the Catskills can only be rescued if New York state’s gaming regulators license a casino — or two — in the Catskills and none in Orange County, the better-off area that sits between the Catskills and the New York metropolitan area.

Three projects have been proposed for the Catskills and six for Orange County, including two by Genting, the Malaysian concern that bankrolled Foxwoods Resort Casino and more recently opened Resorts World Casino at the Aqueduct racetrack in New York City.

“What happened to the Catskills?” a siting board member asked at one point.

Etess offered a history lesson, attributing the demise of the region’s leisure properties to such societal changes as the advent of air conditioning (people in New York no longer needed to escape to the mountains for cool), cheaper air fares that made exotic travel more accessible and the proliferation of Jewish country clubs, which increased options for golfers.

Hours after Mohegan Sun’s presentation, representatives of the two other Catskills projects —Empire Resorts’ Montreign Resort Casino in Monticello and the Nevele Grand Resort, Casino & Spa in the Ulster County village of Ellenville — pitched their proposals to the siting board.

Either project seemingly would dwarf Mohegan Sun at the Concord.

The particularly ambitious Montreign project is part of a larger proposal, EPR Properties’ $1 billion Adelaar, an undertaking that would also include an indoor-outdoor water park, a retail village and a refurbished Rees Jones-designed “Monster” golf course.

Empire Resorts operates Monticello Casino & Raceway, whose future would be uncertain if Montreign is not awarded a casino license, Emanuel Pearlman, chairman of Empire Resorts’ board of directors, told the siting board.

Both Pearlman and Angelique Brunner, the Nevele project’s chief executive officer, said financing for their projects is in place, a boast Mohegan Sun executives could not match. Under questioning by siting board members, they also agreed that the awarding of a license to an Orange County casino could make their projects untenable.

Brunner said the Nevele project would not go forward if a casino were to be sited in Orange County, while Pearlman said the Montreign project would be scaled back in such a circumstance.

Siting board members questioned the Mohegan Sun contingent about the Concord project’s ownership and whether it would cannibalize profits of Mohegan Sun’s existing casinos in Connecticut and Pennsylvania.

Etess said the authority would own 50.5 percent of the project, with the Cappelli Trust owning around 45 percent. Louis Cappelli would personally own just under 5 percent.

Etess said the Mohegan gaming authority is seeking to grow as a company and recognizes that in doing so it’s apt to pursue projects that will have an impact on properties it owns.

Mohegan Sun officials are also monitoring Massachusetts gaming regulators’ ongoing consideration of a casino license for the Greater Boston area, where Mohegan Sun has proposed a $1.3 billion resort casino in Revere. Wynn Resorts has proposed a competing $1.6 billion project in Everett.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com

Twitter: @bjhallenbeck