Grants Move Downs, Oregon’s Previous Racetrack Cancels 2022 Meet up with
Posted on: April thirteen, 2022, 04:57h. 
Very last current on: April thirteen, 2022, 05:27h.
Grants Pass Downs, Oregon’s last surviving industrial thoroughbred racetrack, has canceled its race meet up with for 2022.
The monitor cited a latest selection by the condition racing regulator to deny its application for 225 historic horse racing (HHR) machines at its new enjoyment middle, the Traveling Lark.
Dutch Bros Coffee magnate and regional boy Travis Boersma acquired Grants Go Downs in 2019. He hoped to fund the maintenance of the observe and finance race purses with profits from the adjacent Flying Lark, envisaged as a eating, drinking, and gambling institution.
But it was not to be. The Oregon Racing Fee (ORC) reluctantly nixed the software in February, leaving alone with valuable small racing to regulate.
Gov. Brown Stress
HHR machines permit gamblers bet on replays of earlier races with the identities of people races obscured. They have been legal at Oregon racetracks considering that 2012. Which is because they broadly use the pari-mutuel betting system.
But earlier this yr, the Oregon DOJ issued an view that HHR devices have been far more like slots and lottery game titles than the pari-mutuel horse race betting permitted at racetracks.
The agency said than no a lot more seventy five HHRs ought to be allowed at any 1 location. Or else, it would violate the condition ban on casinos. At the moment, only Native American tribes are permitted to offer on line casino gaming in Oregon below the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.
In a letter dated February 16, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) told the ORC board it would be more than their positions were worth to vote towards “any action inconsistent with the regulation, as interpreted by the Oregon Section of Justice.”
“As a consequence of the Oregon Racing Commission’s vote to deny an working license to The Flying Lark, Grants Go Downs has misplaced its financial engine,” mentioned Travis Boersma in a statement this week.
“While we remained hopeful we would be capable to host a feasible race fulfill, the uncertainty here and across the business has resulted in a drastic reduction of race horses at Grants Go Downs,” he added. “At this stage, it is clear operating the satisfy isn’t possible.”
Job Losses
This is a significantly cry from Boersma’s stated ambition of transforming his hometown into a national epicenter of racing. The cancellation of the 2022 calendar will guide to the decline of close to fifty work. He has previously said he will have to permit far more than 200 workers go at the Traveling Lark.
Boersma blamed the “state and its leadership’s deficiency of understanding of, and appreciation for, the equine business and the wants of rural Oregon” for the track’s predicament. He has hinted that he may possibly pursue the subject via the courts.
Gov. Brown’s hand may possibly have been pressured by a coalition of neighborhood tribes that demanded she rigorously take a look at Boersma’s ideas, arguing they would “fundamentally alter gambling in the state to the detriment of tribal casinos.”