Community Leaders Urge Support for Hollywood Slots
AUSTINTOWN, Ohio – Laura Lewis sees opportunity for the people of Ellsworth Township in the proposed Hollywood Slots at Mahoning Valley Race Course.
In Ellsworth, 91% of the land is used for agriculture and has “a wealth of resources for the equine industry,” Lewis said, including farms to produce hay and grain, breeders and trainers, stables and even 4-H students who could come in and help exercise the horses. “It’s an exciting agricultural boost for the area,” the Ellsworth Township trustee said.
Lewis was among the local officials, business people and representatives of the equine industry who offered testimony at an Ohio Senate hearing at Austintown Township Hall regarding Penn National Gaming’s plans for the proposed race track and gaming facility off Route 46 in Austintown.
Penn National, of Wyomissing, Pa., halted work on the project last month after the Ohio State Racing Commission called on Penn National to add 650 enclosed seats to the plan it presented for 1,100 seats at the proposed track. Penn National officials have said that the additional seating requested can’t be accommodated in the current design and a redesign will take four to six months, during which the economics of the project, which is estimated at $250 million, including $125 million in fees to the state, likely will be evaluated.
The racing commission must approve Penn National’s request to transfer the thoroughbred license from its Beulah Park track outside Columbus.
Thursday’s informal hearing was held by the state senate’s Committee on Workforce and Economic Development and conducted by its chairman, state Sen. Bill Beagle, R-5 Tipp City.
“We want to hear about the impact to the local economy as a result of the delay of construction and perhaps permanent cancellation of the project,” Beagle said. The goal of the hearing was not to repeat the racing commission’s hearings or put the racing commission on trial, he remarked.
Beagle faces a similar situation in his district, where Penn National also wants to transfer a track license to open a new track. A similar hearing in his district was held Friday.
Other state legislators who participated in the hearing included state Sen. Joe Schiavoni, D-33 Boardman, who also serves on the committee, state Sen. Tom Sawyer, D-28 Akron, and state Reps. Bob Hagan, D-58 Youngstown, Ron Gerberry, D-59 Austintown, Sean O’Brien, D-63 Brookfield, and Tom Letson, D-64 Warren.
Austintown Trustee Jim Davis opened the testimony with the story of a recent encounter with an individual who was completing work on a local hospital project and preparing to start work at the Penn National site next. “He’s not prepared if this project is delayed,” he said. Davis also noted that businesses in the township are “expanding like wildfire,” and that two hotel chains are prepared to build in the township. The Austintown Plaza recently renovated to prepare for increased business, and a “major sporting goods chain” is looking at space.
While many businesses have located to the township in recent years, Trustee Lisa Oles reported she has seen “many businesses come and go.” She also pointed out that home market values in the township have declined in recent years, to the point that she and her husband were denied a loan to refinance their home, despite good credit scores and higher than average incomes, because their home was appraised for $60,000 less than it was a decade ago.
“If this project comes to fruition, it will boost our sluggish housing market and provide jobs and additional revenue to our township,” Oles said.
“Penn National would like to play by the rules, but after three recent meeting with the racing commission, it is still unclear to them what the rules are,” she remarked.
“We have been looking forward to this project for some time but have been chagrined, as many of us are of late, with the lack of progress in the project getting state approval in order for the racing license to be moved from the Columbus area to Mahoning County,” said Tony Paglia, vice president for government affairs for the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber.
At a minimum cost of $125 million, the project would be one of the largest in the Mahoning Valley in several years, topped only by V&M Star’s expansion and General Motors’ investment in its Lordstown plant for production of the Cruze. The project is expected to create 1,000 direct and indirect construction jobs and 1,000 direct and indirect permanent jobs once the racino opens. Annual payroll once it opens is projected at $14 million annually, Paglia said.
The project also comes at a “significant time” for the Valley, and new entertainment venues such as Hollywood Slots will provide an additional entertainment outlet for residents and as “an attractive enticement” for companies and individuals considering moving here, Paglia said.
Don Crane, president of the Western Reserve Building and Construction Trades Council, testified about the construction jobs the project would create, 1,000 total and perhaps 500 at a time. “These are good, middle-class jobs,” he said. The “strong, middle-class wages” they pay are used to purchase the Chevrolet Cruze, send kids to Youngstown State University and Eastern Gateway Community College and pay for health care, Crane said.
Not all of Thursday’s testimony was in favor of the project as now configured. Several representatives of the Horsemen’s Benevolence & Protective Association testified that the number of seats is too low and there are too few stalls for horses. Penn National and Horsemen's Association representatives said they are making progress on addressing the stall space issue at the track.
Racing has suffered in Ohio due to competition from tracks in surrounding states that permit gaming, Dave Basler, executive director of the Horsemen's Association, acknowledged. Supporting state racing industry jobs “is one of the principal reasons why the state has decided to place video lottery terminals exclusively at racetracks rather than at other locations,” he said.
While he supports the relocation of the license to Austintown, Rich Zielinski, a thoroughbred owner and HBPA board member, doesn’t understand why Penn National “would be allowed to build a racing facility that is 10% the size of the facility they are abandoning in Grove City [Ohio] in terms of total seating.”
Robin Schuster, also representing the association, remarked that she has never seen a thoroughbred facility as small as the one being proposed for Austintown. “I doubt when Penn was granted the right to operate VLTs in Ohio, it was intended that they just become the most financially successful slot parlors in the country,” she remarked. “No, the goal was to partner VLTs and horse racing so those 15,000 jobs [associated with the state horse racing industry] would stay in Ohio and potentially grow in number; building the smallest thoroughbred facility in the country won’t accomplish that.”
Penn National spokesman Bob Tenenbaum was encouraged that the Mahoning and Trumbull county legislators jointly participated in Thursday morning’s hearing, which lasted just over two hours. “”They clearly know the importance” of the project,” he said. Penn National would be willing, as a condition of the license being granted and being permitted to move forward with its current plan, to appear before the commission a year after the casino opens with attendance figures to discuss whether additional seating is warranted, he said.
“We don’t have any new proposal at this point -- it’s too soon -- to present to the commission,” he said. He did not know whether Penn National would be on the racing commission’s agenda at its scheduled meeting Tuesday. “If the commission wants us to come so they can address us, of course we would be there,” he said.
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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