Vic Zast

Back in the heyday of boxing, fight fans in New York City used to think of Madison Square Garden as a small, crowded bar with a big sports arena for a back room.

The same kind of transposition could be made about the purposes of Woodbine Racetrack, except that it is a casino for slot machines with a racetrack in the backyard. 

Now, Woodbine Entertainment Group, which owns Canada’s biggest horse racing operation, is going to take the definition of a racetrack a step further from recognition.  The metamorphosis of horse racing from a solo-interest pastime to one with the possibility for mass entertainment continues its experiment north of the U.S. border.

David Willmot, CEO of the company, unveiled plans Thursday for a $310 million (Canadian) hotel, entertainment and sports complex expansion to its racetrack and slots facility in Etobicoke, Ontario. The expansion is much more ambitious than Woodbine Entertainment Group’s most recent new development, the WEGZ Sports Bar in Vaughn – an off-track betting emporium.

‘A new level’
“It’s going to elevate horse racing to a new level,” Glenn Crouter, vice-president of media and communications for Woodbine, told the Toronto Star. Crouter was unable to say how much the development would add to Woodbine’s profitability, but he stressed the point that the development was entirely commercial in nature and the attractiveness of its offerings would bring people to the racetrack.

Willmot has always considered the 700-acre property on which Woodbine Racetrack is located to be underdeveloped, but the positive effect that 1,700 slot machines, installed in 1999, had on the racetrack convinced him that now was the right time to build on it.  Woodbine was suffering dramatic declines throughout the 1980s and 1990s, prior to the installation of slots. Today, it’s a thriving racetrack with bigger crowds, better horses and richer purses.

With the slots, a $110 million facelift to the racetrack became possible. The facelift included restaurants, meeting rooms and simulcast theaters, but it also included a complete overhaul of the racing program. The new Woodbine races harness horses and thoroughbreds on different nights of the week. It has a European-styled turf course that runs on the outside of the dirt track, which, in turn, runs around the outside of the harness oval.

Slots fuel growth
As sensational as the remodeling of the racetrack is, it does not compare in popularity with the casino. More than 20,000 people now pack the casino on a typical weekday night. The slots operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with the exception of Christmas.

Woodbine Entertainment group will be working with a Baltimore-based American family-run real estate company, The Cornish Group, to develop its new entertainment complex. The plan calls for night clubs, a sports arena with movable seats and a convention center – all which would lend themselves perfectly to the possibility of a Las Vegas-styled casino in time.

So far, nobody at Woodbine Entertainment Group is saying that will happen. Neither are the local politicians in Etobicoke, who have to approve the plan. But one city council member, Rob Ford, who is lobbying hard for the Woodbine expansion, said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if a casino ends up at the entertainment complex.”

The first phase of Woodbine’s planned expansion is expected to be completed in fall of 2007.