Newsday is out with a story that questions what would be the end game for the two racetrack properties that New York State owns…
The piece envisions a scenario where the Aqueduct racetrack is shut down , sending horse racing soles to Belmont ….
The Aqueduct gaming operation is enlarged to a stand alone Casino…
Belmont gets slot machine’s…
The extra acreage at Aqueduct , which is next door to JFK Airport , rented to developers ….
The whole thing IS gonna be up to Governor Cuomo who has sole control over the state property in Queens and Nassau County…
An article about this was written 5 years ago….
The head of the New York Racing Association, which is operating under a state government reorganization program, is suggesting the racing giant might not be able keep open both its downstate Thoroughbred tracks when it morphs back into some form of private control in the fall of 2015.
In advance of an Aug. 6 board of trustees meeting, Christopher Kay, the NYRA president, wrote to his board members that operating declines in attendance at both Aqueduct Racetrack and Belmont Park “may not be a successful strategy for growth for the next several decades, particularly when all major sports teams in the NYC area have built new stadiums or enhanced their existing facilities with new amenities in the last decade.”
Kay, in a letter to the board made public on the NYRA website the evening of Aug. 5, did not specifically propose selling either of the tracks nor did he lay out any detailed plan of possible alternative ideas for the tracks.
But Kay said NYRA’s management, under its current state oversight program, will “analyze plans for the development of either Belmont or Aqueduct properties.” He did not elaborate, but it is expected he will be grilled by NYRA board members about his possible ideas.
“We will look at the projected risks and benefits of maintaining the status quo,” he wrote of the two-track model in the metropolitan New York area.
Aqueduct, which opened in 1955, has been most talked about as a possible real estate asset NYRA might seek to unload. Belmont first opened in 1905, but the facility as it stands today was opened in 1968 when the current grandstand was built….
More behind a Newsday pay wall…
image….Resorts World Casino New York City