Colonial Downs Reaches Contract
.c The Associated Press
By HANK KURZ Jr.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Colonial Downs avoided having its off-track-betting parlor licenses suspended Wednesday when it gave the Virginia Racing Commission a freshly signed contract with the state's thoroughbred horsemen.
The commission said it was reserving its right to impose the penalty later.
Without the contract, the commission likely was going to enforce a hearing officer's recommendation that the track's OTB licenses be suspended for five days and that the parlors remain closed until the deal was reached. Horsemen have been without a contract since Dec. 31 and are scheduled to have a 25-day meet at the track this fall.
The three-year agreement, hammered out this week and signed shortly before the commission meeting, marks ''a new day for horse racing in Virginia,'' chief negotiator David Cook of the Virginia Horsemen's Protective and Benevolent Association said.
Colonial Downs lost $5.3 million last year, and Cook said the deal gives the troubled track a year to get its financial house in order before the HPBA members begin getting a greater percentage of the OTB betting revenue.
The contract still requires the approval of the commission. VRC chairwoman Robin Traywick Williams said she didn't like all the terms revealed during the meeting, but would reserve judgment until she'd seen the contract.
''What really concerns me is with such a limited amount of purse money for the next two years, there will be no growth in racing that I can see,'' Williams said after the meeting.
''The horsemen are over a barrel,'' she said, and probably inclined to take what they could get rather than risk having no meet at all.
''You get as much as you can, but you don't always get everything you want,'' Cook told the commission. ''The horsemen achieved many of their goals in these negotiations.''
Woodberry Payne, president of the HPBA, and Cook said the group decided not to nit-pick over numbers.
''We're not dealing with their finances and examining their ledger sheets,'' Payne said outside the meeting. ''We constructed a contract that was beneficial for the horsemen and gave us purses that would work.''
The deal has three components, Cook said. It allows the track to hold its fall thoroughbred meet this year with a lump sum of $3.125 million in purses for 25 racing dates, then begin depositing 5 1/4 percent of the handle from the track's four OTBs into prize money accounts for the meets in 2000 and 2001. The deposits would begin in January.
Both sides also agreed to work harder on securing a location and permit for an OTB parlor in populous northern Virginia, seen by many as the key to the track's survival, and to improve quarters for horsemen who live at the track during meets.
''Today should be nothing but positive news for the horse industry and Colonial Downs,'' track lawyer Jim Weiberg told the commission. The contract is based on conservative projections of $90 million in handle for this year, and would provide $4 million or more for purses even after debts are repaid in the ensuing two years, he said.
A portion of the 25-page contract also must be approved by the Maryland Jockey Club, which is under contract to run the meets at Colonial Downs. H. Lane Kneedler, lawyer for the MJC, told the commission he had not yet reviewed the entire document and could not say whether the jockey club would approve it.
The OTB license suspensions and parlor closures were recommended by VRC executive secretary Stanley K. Bowker after the track failed to meet a commission deadline for reaching an agreement with the horsemen. |
