Casino
gambling right on track - ARTICLE FROM BOSTON GLOBE
By Adrian Walker, Globe Columnist, 03/25/99 LAINVILLE -
There's a new horse track in town, and what a booming
business it is. It opened just eight days ago, but already the parking lot is full, and
hundreds of gamblers are scrambling for a piece of the action. In fact, they bet well over
$100,000 every day last weekend. Yet the Plainridge Racecourse has no track. It doesn't
have a grandstand. In fact, it doesn't have a single horse.
But just because there isn't a live trotter in sight doesn't mean
it isn't post time. Because what the state's newest track does have are 300 tiny TV sets
that carry races via satellite feed from racing at Saratoga, Hialeah, California - even
Australia. And customers plunk down bets just as if the horses were running right outside
the newly installed windows.
(The windows aren't the only new feature: Plainridge almost
had no running water. Just hours before the track opened on March 17, Plainville forced
the track's owners to fork over $40,000 to hook up to the town's water supply.) Plainridge
marks the latest chapter in the ludicrous story of gambling in Massachusetts, in which
billions of dollars a year are legally wagered in a state that publicly frowns on betting.
Gambling is supposedly banned in Massachusetts, with some
exceptions being the state Lottery at your neighborhood convenience store, and four
legally sanctioned racetracks. Now we've graduated to legal gambling at a racetrack with
no horses. It's completely legal, but no less ridiculous. Anyone taking a look around the
$14 million facility can see that these owners are not in the business of horse racing. In
addition to the off-track betting - racespeak for gambling on races at other tracks -
Plainridge has a room set aside for 400 slot machines, ready to spring into action the day
the Legislature approves slots at racetracks.
Even by the standards of modern-horse racing, in
which tracks typically make more money on races at tracks other than their own, Plainridge
is unique. Real, live racing is tentatively scheduled to begin on Patriots Day, but even
then, the track's president says, a whopping 94 percent of its revenue will still come
from simulcasting. The horses will be little more than equine props for a $100
million-a-year gambling operation.
At Suffolk Downs, by comparison, simulcasting
accounts for about 55 percent of the daily handle. ''If I told you I wouldn't make more
money without horses, I'd be lying to you,'' Plainridge president Gary Piontkowski said
Monday. ''Anyone in this business would be.''
From the beginning, the track has been plagued with
financial issues and ethical concerns. Several investment teams pulled out amid concerns
from the racing commissioner, aired in the press, that the track was being built on a
shoestring, and that one prominent prospective investor, Louis Guiliano, who owns the land
the track sits on, had refused to provide critical financial information to the state.
Opening dates came and went. The state racing commission - which Piontkowski headed from
1991 to 1993 - approved his group's application for a license (minus Guiliano as an
investor) by a 2-to-1 vote. Robert Hutchinson, Piontkowski's successor as state racing
commissioner, voted against it; Christ Decas and Arthur Khoury, who had served on the
commission with Piontkowski, voted in his favor.
Hutchinson, the odd man out on the commission he heads,
makes no secret of the fact that he considers Plainridge a scam. While the state requires
tracks to run 150 racing dates a year, most of Plainridge's races will run Monday and
Tuesday afternoons, in front of minuscule crowds. [NOTE: Tennessee statute required only
34 days of live racing] ''I would say that they are effectively off-track betting
facilities or like a race bookroom in a casino,'' Hutchinson said. ''One of the concerns
we have is that the live racing schedule is scheduled to be on Saturday, with
doubleheaders on Monday and Tuesday. Who's going to be there Monday and Tuesday?''
For years now, debate has intermittently raged in this
state over how much gambing is acceptable. The huge expansion of the lottery pushed the
line back. Foxwoods in Connecticut has intensified the pressure for casinos here. But as
often happens while government wrings its hands over policy, reality keeps charging right
ahead. Plainridge isn't a racetrack; it's a gambling parlor. The debate over whether to
have casinos has missed the point. We have one now, right off I-495, in the shadow of a
makeshift grandstand, bordered by an unfinished cinder track.
Adrian Walker's e-mail address is walker@globe.com. This story ran on page B01 of the
Boston Globe on 03/25/99. © Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company. |
