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Gilbert favors idea of gaming in Valley
ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Quicken Loans founder and chair Dan Gilbert addresses the Detroit Economic Club, Thursday, March 11, 2010 in Detroit. Gilbert announced that his company Fathead will be joining Quicken Loans in the move downtown. (AP Photo/Detroit Free Press, Kathleen Galligan)
Cavs owner to study racetrack plan, look at opportunities
CLEVELAND
Dan Gilbert, whose company is building a $350 million Las Vegas-style gambling casino in downtown Cleveland, said he’s interested in bringing gaming to the Mahoning Valley.
“We’re opportunistic,” he told The Vindicator on Thursday. “We know that Youngstown has one of the bigger gambling bases in the whole state” and area residents want “some kind of facility” in the Valley.
But that’s not going to happen yet, Gilbert said.
“We’re very well aware of how interested [those in the Valley] are in” gambling, Gilbert told the newspaper Thursday. “We’re going to dive in and learn what Penn has proposed and look at other opportunities.”
Gilbert was referring to Penn National Gaming Inc., which will meet with the Ohio State Racing Commission next Thursday to discuss relocating its Raceway Park in Toledo to the vacant Centerpointe business park in Austintown.
“We did hear the news, but we haven’t studied it,” said Gilbert, who also is the majority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers and founder of the Quicken Loans lending company.
“It’s a big marketplace. [There are] 11 million people here in the state,” he said.
Gilbert spoke to The Vindicator after announcing plans for the $350 million Horseshoe Casino Cleveland that will open early next year.
Gilbert’s Rock Gaming business is partnering with Caesars Entertainment Corp. to build a casino at the Higbee Building on Public Square. The joint venture, known as Rock Ohio Caesars LLC, also will build another casino in downtown Cleveland, near Lake Erie, and one in Cincinnati.
Penn National is building casinos in Toledo and Columbus.
Ohio voters approved constitutional amendments in November 2009 for the Las Vegas-style casinos in the four cities.
Penn National wants to move Raceway, a harness track, and Beulah Park, a thoroughbred-horse track in Grove City, near Columbus, because of the casinos it is building in those two areas.
Penn National would invest between $200 million and $250 million for the racetrack in Austintown, said state Rep. Robert F. Hagan of Youngstown, D-60th, who has discussed the move with the company for the past several months.
Penn National wants to build the racetrack at the Centerpointe site in Austintown, off state Route 46 just south of Interstate 80, said Hagan and state Sen. Joe Schiavoni of Canfield, D-33rd, who’s also met with the company.
The move would be greatly enhanced if slot machines at the state’s seven racetracks were legalized, the two said.
Meanwhile, officials with the racing commission will meet Feb. 16 with the Mahoning Valley Development Group, a separate group also looking to bring horse racing to the Valley.
That company is proposing a $300 million complex in the Valley on as much as 700 acres that would include a thoroughbred-horse racetrack, resort and possibly a casino with slot machines.
Rick Lertzman, the group’s chairman, said Thursday in a telephone interview that Mahoning Valley Development Group plans to apply for a license to have parimutuel betting at a thoroughbred track in the Valley at the Feb. 16 meeting with the commission.
The company is tentatively planning to announce the location of the proposed track Feb. 21, he said.
Lertzman has declined to disclose the names of the investors in his company’s proposed track.
Gilbert said he’s heard of this project, but his company is not involved “in any way, shape or form” with the proposal.
“I would never rule out anything in the region, but we have not been involved in the discussions at this point at all,” he said.
Also, Lertzman said his company will have an attorney at the commission’s meeting Thursday to object to Penn National’s plan to relocate Raceway Park to the Valley.
Lertzman said he had an agreement with the owners of the Centerpointe property in October 2010 to purchase the property. He said he was informed two months later that the deal was off and later learned Penn National wants to locate a track there.