: News

Filed Under:

Horse Racing Industry Watches Slots Vote In Anne Arundel County

December 7, 2009
Play associated audio
comments
Gov. Martin O'Malley signed a bill this week giving the state's horse racing tracks much needed revenue through 2013.
www.event-solutions.com
Gov. Martin O'Malley signed a bill this week giving the state's horse racing tracks much needed revenue through 2013.

By Cathy Duchamp

The Anne Arundel County Council will decide tonight, December 7, whether to allow construction of a casino next to a shopping mall. But the story is more about horse racing than slot machines.

The way Alan Foreman sees it, the future of horse racing in Maryland is in the hands of seven politicians who run Anne Arundel County.

"For Maryland racing, if the zoning is approved, that probably will spell the demise of Laurel Park and with it the racing industry in Maryland as we know it," Foreman says.

Foreman is the attorney for the state Horsemen's Association. He says when voters approved video slots last year, most assumed the casinos would be built next to racetracks. But the Laurel Park people couldn't come up with cash for a slots license. The real estate developers who did want the casino built next to Arundel Mills mall:

"Today, Arundel Mills generates 14 million annual visitors, has access right off 295," says Joe Weisman, partner at Baltimore's Cordish Companies. He believes the horse racing industry would make more money off slots at the mall than slots at a track.

"It doesn't matter where the casino is located. The horse racing industry gets the money from the casino," Weisman says. "So therefore they should want the casino where the most amount of revenue would be generated. And without debate that's Arundel Mills."

The Anne Arundel County Council and the Maryland Video Lottery Location Commission will look at that claim, when both groups take separate votes on the mall proposal tonight.

Arts & Culture

NPR

Decades Later And Across An Ocean, A Novel Gets Its Due

John Williams' Stoner sold just 2,000 copies when it was originally published in 1965. It's now acknowledged as a classic work, is a best-seller across Europe and the No. 1 novel in the Netherlands.

Food

NPR

Giant Renaissance Food People Descend Upon New York

Giuseppe Arcimboldo was a 16th-century artist who liked to play with his food, transforming it into the building blocks of many of his fantastical portraits. Artist Philip Haas has taken those portraits out of museums, reinterpreting them as colossal statues that interact with the natural environment.

Politics

NPR

Political Takeaways: Headaches For The White House

Controversies dominated this past week's political headlines, leaving the Obama White House on the defensive, trying to contain any lasting damage. Host Rachel Martin talks with NPR's Mara Liasson.

Technology

NPR

Young Kenyans Build Mobile Apps For Local Use

College students and recent graduates crammed the top floor of a tech hub in Nairobi for a competition built around the theme "Solutions for the Next Billion Mobile Users." Africa has more than 600 million mobile phone users (approximately 11 percent of the global total) – and the number is growing.

Leave a Comment

Help keep the conversation civil. Please refer to our Terms of Use and Code of Conduct before posting your comments.