ASHLAND —
Keeneland is talking with a Nevada-based company about building a new racetrack in Kentucky, but this track will not be featuring the Thoroughbreds that have made the Lexington racetrack so popular. Instead, Keeneland and Full House Resorts of Nevada are planning to build a Quarter Horse racetrack near Corbin.
The plan also calls for Keeneland and Full House Resorts purchasing the Thunder Ridge harness track and “reinventing it,” Keeneland president and CEO Bill Thomason told the Lexington Herald-Leader in an exclusive interview. While that sounds kike good news for the struggling harness racing tack in Prestonsburg, many beleive Keeneland’s only interest in Thunder Ridge is to close it and move it to Corbin. If so, that’s the kind of “reinvention” was will have a negative impact in Prestonsburg.
“We think we’re putting things forward that will be a great help to the industry and the sport,” Thomason said of plans for the Corbin track. “We’re looking to the long term, looking to do something big, and it will be special. ... We think the community will embrace it and enjoy it and it will provide economic gains.”
Keeneland leaders said they envision a “Keeneland-esque” facility that would offer simulcasting and instant racing in addition to a boutique summertime Quarter Horse meet of about a dozen race dates. “We’re going to build a modern facility, scaled to the market ... that will grow to meet the demands of the area,” Thomason said.
The proposal would need regulatory approval before it could proceed.
State Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, said there’s a market for the track.
“I think Keeneland should be lauded for its desire to take the Keeneland model and bring in a new partner and build a new racing and simulcasting facility in Kentucky,” Thayer said. “Don’t see many people building new racetracks these days. ... There is pent-up demand for race dates, Quarter Horses in this part of the country who want to run, and fans who will come to see them race.”
Full House operates casinos in Indiana, Nevada, Mississippi and New Mexico and would share ownership and operation of the facility in southern Kentucky.
Jim Dacey, spokesman for Full House Resorts, said the companies would work together to determine the scope of the facility, but it will be a “casino-entertainment complex.”
The proposal came as a surprise to Knox County Judge-Executive J.M. Hall, but he told the Lexington newspaper the idea sounded like a good one.
“I would love to have a racetrack in Knox County. Like a Keeneland, here? If we have something here, we could pull in people from Tennessee,” Hall said. “That would be pretty big.”
Racetracks that thrive on wagering are banned in Tennessee. That greatly increases the odds of a track near the Tennessee border thriving, and by featuring Quarter Horse races, the track would not be competing with existing tracks that complain they have trouble getting enough top Thoroughbreds to race in Kentucky.
Still, approval of a Quarter Horse racetrack in Kentucky is far from a sure bet. Opposition to new forms of gambling in the state is strong, and some would consider adding betting on Quarter Horses to the parimutuel wagering that has existed at Thoroughbred tracks for decades a new form of gambling. And it is clear Full House Resorts does not want to limit the gambling at the Corbin track to betting on horses. It wants a full-blown casino at the track.
While we think a casino would require voter approval of a constitutional amendment that legislators so far have refused to even put on the ballot, adding a Quarter Horse track to the existing Thoroughbred tracks would be a way to create jobs and improve the economy in Kentucky. We like the idea.
Editorials
Another track?
Keeneland plans Quarter Horse racing in Corbin
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The next step
The people — or at least those who took the time to vote in Tuesday’s special election — have spoken. The issue of alcohol sales in Grayson has ben settled for at least the next three years.
In an outcome that surprised many, Grayson voters rather convincingly for the legal sale of alcohol in the city for the first time since 1937. With 511 voters answering in the affirmative to the question, “Are you in favor of alcoholic beverages in Grayson, Ky.?” as opposed to 393 voting “no,” the results were not even close. The measure passed in all seven of the city’s precincts. -
Top Father
In the Spade family, the vote was unanimous. Both 12-year-old Emma Spade, who will be a seventh-grader at Verity Middle School this fall, and Emma’s 11-year-old brother Will, who attends Hagar Elementary, both thought so highly of their dad — Ponderosa Elementary School principal Matt Spade — that they both wrote essays nominating him for the Ashland Breakfast Kiwanis Club’s annual Father of the Year award, presented annually on the Tuesday before Father’s Day.
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An unselfish act
Even before the start of the recent Boyd County Health Department’s Bicycle Rodeo, Gavin Eckard said that if he won one of the two bicycle given away at the event, he would give his new bike to someone who needed it more than he did.
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Crop still banned
When their colleagues in the U.S. Senate rejected their efforts to legalize industrial hemp production as part of the Senate farm bill, Kentucky’s two Republican senators — Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and freshman Rand Paul — reacted to the Senate refusal to include their hemp proposal in the bill by saying they would oppose the comprehensive farm bill.
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It's not the breed
Lorie Akers wants the Ashland City Commissioner to adopt an ordinance banning pit bulls in the city. Since she claimed her Chihuahua Paco was attacked and killed by a neighbor’s pit bull while the little dog was chained in the back yard, it is understandable that Akers is worried that her children and other pets could be endangered by pit bulls.
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A necessary evil
The shifting of the tax burden that began when the Ashland Board of City Commissioners first adopted the payroll tax in the 1990s continues as the mayor and four elected commissioners prepare to increase the payroll tax from 1.5 to 2 percent while at the same time decreasing property taxes.
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No time to read
The complaints of two leading legislators about a provision added to a complex pension reform bill approved by the 3013 Kentucky General Assembly points hat can happen when legislative leaders wait until the final days or even hour of a legislative session to bring major pieces of legislation. In so doing, they force legislators to vote on bills they have not even had time to read.
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To the polls
On Tuesday, residents of Grayson will discover if attitudes about the sale of alcohol in the city have changed in the past 42 years. It is an important question, and we encourage registered voters to take the time to go to the polls Tuesday.
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No snickers
When agricultural experts first began suggesting in the 1980s that raising goats could be a viable source of farm income to help offset the decline in tobacco income, most area farmers snickered.
Come on now, farmers thought, raising goats for meat? Who eats goat meat? If anything, you raised goats for their milk, not their meat. -
'Lost the public'
Tracy Boyd, president of the Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders’ and Exhibitors’ Association, says he is convinced that modern-day show horses are cleaner than they have ever been.
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