AURORA | On summer weekends, Arapahoe Park is the only place for Colorado gamblers looking to catch the sport of kings live.
Aside from 39 days a year — the maximum number of race days allowed under state law — the sprawling 400-acre, 10,000-seat horse-racing track near E-470 and East Quincy Avenue sits largely unused.
This fall, track officials are pushing a ballot question that would ask voters to allow casino-style gaming at Arapahoe Park, which would include 2,500 slot machines and 65 table games. The question, which is similar to one voters rejected 80-20 in 2003 is expected to meet stiff opposition from the state’s existing casinos, which argue it would crush the casino industry in the state’s historic mining towns.
Becky Brooks, a spokeswoman for Mile High Racing, which manages Arapahoe Park and 11 off-track betting facilities around the state, said the track is looking for ways to be a year-round attraction.
“That’s the reason that a number of race tracks around the country have looked at expansion,” she said last week as jockeys prepared their horses for the May 24 opening races. “You have a huge facility and capital investment here that’s not used that much.”
Backers of the ballot question are gathering signatures now to place the question on the ballot this fall. If voters approve the measure, it would allow casino gaming at Arapahoe Park as well new tracks in Pueblo and Mesa counties. Those tracks have not yet been built and would have to be operating solely as a race track for five years before they would be allowed to add casino gaming.
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Millions in tax revenues from new gaming would be earmarked for public schools, backers say.
Brooks said expanded gaming at Arapahoe Park would mean about 1,000 permanent jobs at the site, plus however many construction jobs are required to build new facilities. Right now, Arapahoe Park has about 150 employees during the racing season, which runs from about Memorial Day to August every year. But in the offseason, the number of employees dips to just 38.
Today, gaming in Colorado is largely limited to casinos in Blackhawk, Central City and Cripple Creek, off-track betting sites like Havana Park, and the horse racing at Arapahoe Park. Dog racing tracks around the state have all closed, leaving Arapahoe Park as the sole live-racing facility in the state.
Brooks said the track’s status as the lone gambling option of its kind in the metro area makes it an ideal place to open a casino.
“It’s a venue where there is gaming already, so it’s just simply an extension of that,” she said. “We’re not looking at building something like a Blackhawk or a Central City.”
The state’s existing casinos are already lining up against the measure.
Lois Rice, executive director of the Colorado Gaming Association, said a casino in metro Denver would crush business in historic mining towns, and with it the tax revenues those casinos generate.
“If there was gambling available in major metro areas in the state, there would be no incentive for folks to drive to the historic mining towns,” she said.
Plus what backers of expanded gaming at Arapahoe Park are pushing goes far beyond what is offered today at Colorado casinos, Rice said. With 2,500 slot machines, a casino at Arapahoe Park would dwarf the state’s largest casino, Ameristar in Blackhawk, which has 1,500 slot machines.
A new casino wouldn’t mean an expanded gaming market, either, Rice said.
“The market across the U.S. is reaching a saturation point and we don’t believe that opening new casinos will grow the market. It just transfers existing revenues from one place to another,” she said.
But backers of the measure say there is an untapped market of gamblers in Colorado who could be lured by a casino at Arapahoe Park.
“We know that many Coloradans currently leave the state to enjoy gaming,” said Monica McCafferty, a spokeswoman for Coloradans For Better Schools, which is backing the plan. “By expanding gaming at Arapahoe Park horse racetrack, much of that money would stay in state to benefit Colorado schools.”
McCafferty pointed to an analysis from the Colorado Legislative Council that estimated a casino at Arapahoe Park would generate $114 million in tax revenue designated for education if it were up and running in 2016.
The campaign is expected to be a pricey one, with backers of the measure already having raised $1.1 million and opponents expected to raise plenty of their own.
Opponents have not yet filed campaign finance reports, but Rice said she expects the state’s casinos to spend heavily.
The push for expanded gaming at Arapahoe Park comes at a time when the popularity of horse racing around the country is declining steadily.
According to the Jockey Club, a New York-based company that tracks horse racing statistics, the number of races around the country have fallen from more than 74,000 in 1989 to just 43,000 last year. The same trend has held true in Colorado, where there were more than 600 races in 1993, and just 250 last year.
Brooks said that while Arapahoe Park remains a popular place every summer they need to branch out to grow.
“The bottom line is it has been pretty successful for 20 years,” she said. “But in order to grow and to expand, they are looking at expanded gaming.”