Odds On Racing - Harness Racing

Valley View Downs Coming to Pennsylvania

February 15, 2008

Architects for Cope Linder Associates in Philadelphia presented the design for Valley View Downs, a harness track and slot-machine casino to be built in Mahoning Township, PA at the intersection of Routes 422 and 551.

The facility is expected to cost $428 million, and calls for a 275,000-square-foot structure. The building exteriors will be mostly glass, making the activities visible from the outside. Architectural plans also call for potential expansions, with a hotel and retail facilities outside the track/casino. Valley View Downs will have 1,000 employees, and it is expected to draw 4 million visitors annually.

Centaur had previously applied for a license to open a harness facility in Beaver County, until the corporation reached an agreement with Carmen Shick, a Mahoning Township businessman who had been contending for the harness license at the Valley View Downs site.

Shick, who owned the property, sold 250 acres to Centaur and retains development rights to an area around the track with plans to build a hotel and indoor water park near the track/casino complex.

Under state law that legalized slot-machine gambling in Pennsylvania, Centaur was granted permission to apply for a slot-machine license, which is under consideration by the Pennsylvania Gaming Review Board. Construction work is on hold, pending approvals from the county and Mahoning Township, along with the Gaming Review Board, which is the most crucial.

The casino would have 3,000 slot machines, but Brian Elmore, the facility’s general manager of racing, said the harness track might put Valley View Downs at the forefront of harness racing in the United States.

Valley View Downs will be the first one-mile harness track in Pennsylvania and will rival the nation’s top tracks from the day it opens, Elmore said. The track will be exclusively a harness track, and will be faster than The Meadowlands and easier on the horses, he said.

Once the track opens, it will have 150 days of scheduled racing annually and simulcasts from other tracks 363 days a year.

Elmore said he planned for the track to either establish itself for one of harness racing’s six triple crown races — the Hambletonian, Kentucky Futurity and Yonkers Trot for trotters, and Cane Pace, Little Brown Jug and Messenger Stakes for pacers — or establish a signature event, such as the Breeders’ Cup or the Dubai World Cup.