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Panel to let Southland stay open all weekend Friday, May 2, 2008 By Rob Moritz Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - The Arkansas Racing Commission on Thursday approved a request by Southland Greyhound Park in West Memphis to stay open all weekend. Troy Keeping, general manager of the dog track, told the commission that the additional hours would increase revenue and allow the facility to compete with casinos in northern Mississippi. Keeping estimated that staying open 24 hours on weekends would generate an addition $1.3 million to $1.6 million annually for Southland and $234,000 to $260,000 in additional tax revenue for the state. Under the new hours, which begin May 12, the track's new $40 million electronic gaming room will be open from 8 a.m. to 4 a.m. Monday through Thursday. The gaming room, which has about 700 games of skill, will remain open from 8 a.m. Friday to 4 a.m. Monday, Keeping said. Last July, the commission voted to allow the Southland to open at 10 a.m. on Friday and Saturday and close at 6 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Keeping said a Southland launched a media campaign last year after a market study found that 96 percent of the people surveyed thought it just offered greyhound racing. "There was a very low awareness of the $40 million gaming expansion," he said. During the first three months since the campaign began, Southland has seen its gaming revenues increase 24 percent as casinos in northern Mississippi are reporting a drop in attendance and revenue, he said. In 2007, Southland opened a $40 million renovation that included a 110,000-square-foot addition with a gaming room, nightclub and bar, special events center and 280-seat buffet. Also Thursday, Eric Jackson, manager of Oaklawn Park thoroughbred track in Hot Springs, updated the commission on the major expansion project at that facility to accommodate more than 900 new electronic games of skill. The project, which will add a 60,000-square-foot gaming room to the south end of the grandstand, began about a week ago and is expected to cost at least $20 million. "We're moving so fast we haven't had time to take bids on all of it," Jackson said, adding the project couldn't begin until the end of the racing season and after the last horse left the park. He said the project should be completed within 12 months, but because construction will stop during next year's racing season, the new building should be open in 18 months. Jackson said 140 electronic games of skill are currently available for use at the track, along with 375 instant racing games. The Legislature in 2005 approved a measure that authorized local-option elections in West Memphis and at Hot Springs on whether to allow electronic games of skill at the tracks. Voters in both cities approved expanded gambling, and both elections were challenged in circuit court on grounds that county residents living outside the cities should have been allowed to vote in the elections. Circuit judges in Crittenden County, where West Memphis is located, and in Garland County, where Hot Springs is located, dismissed the lawsuits, declaring the law that authorized the elections constitutional. The conservative Arkansas Family Council later appealed the Garland County decision to the state Supreme Court. The high court affirmed the decision late last year. |
