B.J. Fairchild-Newman, Shelbyville News Staff Writer
Get ready, Shelby County.
Indiana Downs is making plans for a $500 million project that will rival Honda's investment in Decatur County with its construction of a $550 million automobile assembly plant.
During Thursday's meeting in Indianapolis of the Indiana Gaming Commission, Indiana Downs revealed conceptual architectural renderings of Phase I, which detailed the proposed expansion of the racing facility to provide for a casino to house slot machines at the local track. The initial plans provide for a 48,000-square-foot casino to feature between 500 to 700 slot machines that is expected to open for business in the spring of 2008.
Indiana Downs will seek approval for its conceptual designs at a meeting of the Indiana Horse Racing Commission on Sept. 27 to be held at the Shelbyville track.
The track will continue to operate during the construction. A wall between the current facility and the casino will be torn down once the casino is finished and ready for the slot-machine gambling to begin, and a connector will allow easy access between the two buildings.
According to Lee McNeely, one of the lawyers for Indiana Downs, the casino will face the track and probably feature large windows so that the horse racing is clearly visible to those playing on the slot machines.
McNeely stressed horse racing will continue to be the main focus of Indiana Downs, and the increased gambling at the track has the primary goal of promoting the horse racing industry in the state.
"The larger purses that the track will be able to offer will bring the best horses to Indiana Downs," McNeely said. "The highest quality horses naturally go to the higher-stakes races."
By the spring of 2009, the casino will dwarf the original 75,000-square-foot white structure with its distinctive red roof that was completed in December 2001 when the initial Phase I expansion grows by another 180,000 square feet. A casino with a total of 228,000 square feet will then house the maximum 2,000 slot machines authorized by the Legislature during the 2007 session.
The Indiana Legislature mandated that Indiana Downs and Hoosier Park in Anderson spend at least $100 million on the construction of a building to house the gambling devices, but Indiana Downs is planning to build on a much more elaborate scale.
According to Ross Mangano, president of Oliver Estate Inc., which now owns Indiana Downs, a world-class facility is in the works that will be "second to none in Indiana."
The preliminary Phase I plans also include a 306-room, on-site hotel, 79,000 square feet of retail development, two parking garages with room for a total of 3,456 cars and 91,000 square feet for "back-of-house" security operations and offices.
Although the plans for Phase I may sound grand enough, the conceptual planning for Phase II targets further expansion within four to five years.
"Everything that we are planning to do will enhance Indiana Downs as a major entertainment destination," McNeely said. "There will be busloads of people coming from Indianapolis to Indiana Downs every day."
Jon Schuster, general manager at Indiana Downs, echoed Mangano and McNeely's excitement over the plans for the track.
"It is going to be first-class, just as I knew it would be, just as we have been from the beginning," Schuster said. "The horse racing industry, the county and the state are going to be thrilled with what we do here."