Horse track owner wants to move 2 Ohio sites
TOLEDO, Ohio - A gaming company building two casinos in Ohio wants to move its horse racing tracks in Toledo and the Columbus area to new sites within the state if lawmakers allow video slot machines at all of Ohio's racetracks.
TOLEDO, Ohio - A gaming company building two casinos in Ohio wants to move its horse racing tracks in Toledo and the Columbus area to new sites within the state if lawmakers allow video slot machines at all of Ohio's racetracks.
The new racetracks would be built just outside Youngstown and in Dayton, at the site of an abandoned auto parts plant, Penn National Gaming Inc. announced Thursday.
Penn National plans to spend $400 million on the two new tracks that it says would create thousands of temporary construction jobs along with permanent jobs at the two sites.
The biggest hurdle may be securing approval of video slots.
Gov. John Kasich hasn't decided yet whether he's open to the idea, which former Gov. Ted Strickland proposed as a budget-balancing measure in 2009. Opponents sidelined the racetrack slots plan with a legal challenge, saying the machines are illegal gambling devices outside the state's constitutional definition of a legal lottery.
Kasich first wants to do a thorough review of all gambling in the state. "He wants to see how these will work together, what impact they'll have," said spokesman Rob Nichols.
Moving the racetracks also will need the state racing commission's approval. Penn National unveiled its plan at a commission meeting on Thursday.
The company, based in Wyomissing, Berks County, is known primarily as the operator of racetrack casinos in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Maryland. It also is co-owner, with Greenwood Racing Inc., of Freehold Raceway in Freehold, N.J.
The two new tracks would go to areas of Ohio that have lost thousands of manufacturing jobs in recent years. Dayton has been hit hard by auto job losses. The track there would be built on the site of a shuttered Delphi Automotive plant
The horse track near Youngstown would be built on vacant land in Austintown, just south of the Ohio Turnpike.
Ohio's horse-racing industry has been in decline in recent years, losing customers and money to nearby states with casinos and racetracks with slots or casino gambling. That's why Ohio tracks have been pushing for video slots.
Track owners have said slots would help protect 17,000 jobs at their facilities.
Ohio voters in 2009 approved casinos in Toledo, Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati, which will only add to the competition for horse tracks.
Penn National is building two of those casinos, in Toledo and Columbus, areas where the company also own racetracks. Executives say the sites would be competing for customers, and that's why they want to move the horse tracks.
The moves would mean the end of Raceway Park in Toledo and Beulah Park in suburban Columbus. Both have had dramatic drops in customers and races over the last few decades. On many race days, the tracks draw little more than 100 people.
