A Florida Senate committee on Tuesday night advanced a bill that would allow Gulfstream Park to decouple its live racing license from its casino license, but only after amending the legislation to ensure that live racing would continue at the track for at least the next seven years.
Senators who ultimately voted for the bill did so after hearing nearly three dozen individuals testify against it under the contention that it would be extraordinarily damaging to the entire state’s horse industry, and, in some cases, after pledging to the Thoroughbred industry that they would work together with equine interests on a future beyond live racing at Gulfstream.
“You have a group of senators on this committee who are committed to your future,” said the chair of the committee, Sen. Jennifer Bradley, after the vote. “We don’t know what that future looks like right now but we are committed to having those conversations to see what that future looks like. … This is the start of the conversation.”
The vote was 5-2.
The hearing in front of the Senate Regulated Industries Committee was the first to take place outside of the legislature’s House, where similar legislation passed out of two different committees earlier this year. The second committee added an amendment ensuring five years of live racing at Gulfstream.
The introduction of the legislation has galvanized nearly the entire Florida Thoroughbred industry to join up in opposition to its passage. Lobbyists hired by the industry under the banner of a newly formed organization called the Thoroughbred Racing Initiative have said that there is less support for the bill in the Senate than in the House.
Prior to the bill being called for discussion or a vote, the sponsor, Sen. Danny Burgess, offered an amendment that would require the casino and racing licenses at Gulfstream Park to remain coupled for four years. After that, if Gulfstream wanted to decouple the licenses, it would have to provide a three-year notice before ceasing live racing.
Burgess was nearly apologetic in comments accompanying the introduction of the amendment, foreshadowing that he intended to vote in support of the bill. After voting in support, he called the seven-year timeline “a lengthy runway out the gate so that we can build this out,” reiterating comments by other legislators that contended that the passage of the bill would force Gulfstream’s parent company, 1/ST Racing and Gaming, to meet with racing constituents on a plan that would ensure the survival of the industry over the long-term.
“Help us find a solution,” Burgess said. “Help us find the road map ahead.”
Current statutes require Gulfstream to run at least 40 days of live racing to retain its casino license. Still, Gulfstream runs approximately 200 days, on a year-round schedule, under an agreement with its horsemen in which purses receive subsidies of approximately $6 million a year from the casino operations. According to multiple officials with knowledge of Gulfstream’s finances, the racing operation has always generated positive cash flow for its owner, 1/ST Racing and Gaming.
1/ST Racing, which is headquartered in Aurora, Ontario, Canada, has been headed by Belinda Stronach for the past decade. She took control of the company's racing assets as a result of a settlement of a bitter feud between herself and the founder of the company, her father, Frank Stronach.
Still, Gulfstream, which is located inland in Hallandale Beach, Fla., in the metro Miami area, sits on extremely valuable real estate, and officials for 1/ST have told horsemen that the company is considering redeveloping the site or possibly selling it outright. Nothing in current Florida law would prohibit the company from selling the site or developing it as long as the new or current owner did not operate a casino.
People who testified in opposition to the bill represented varied elements of the Thoroughbred industry’s economic ecosystem, including trainers, owners, breeders, veterinarians, horsemen’s officials, auction houses, and suppliers. All contended that the bill would devastate the horse economy in Florida – under the belief that 1/ST would pull the plug on live racing at its earliest opportunity.
“You are voting on a bill that on one hand that will benefit a single Canadian company,” said Joe Imbesi, an owner and breeder who owns Briardale Farm in Marion County. “On the other hand it will severely adversely affect thousands of your constituents, people who voted for you.”
Multiple Thoroughbred constituents said that the state was breaking a promise to the horse industry that casinos at pari-mutuel facilities would be used to “sustain the horse industry, not destroy it,” when casinos at racetracks were authorized in 2005, as Vanessa Nye, a lawyer who is an owner and breeder put it.
“You’re doing this on behalf of getting a single sparkling casino in Hallandale that will destroy an entire agricultural ecosystem of small businesses,” said David O’Farrell, the general manager of his family’s Ocala Stud.
Sen. Jason Pizzo, who comes from a real-estate development family and whose district includes Hallandale Beach, pushed back against contentions that the Florida racing industry was thriving, leaning on foal-crop and mares-bred figures that show a steep decline in both metrics over the past 20 years.
Pizzo also said that the industry was benefiting from a “subsidy” from 1/ST through the slot-machine revenues at its casino, and he said that Florida law does not require any companies other than pari-mutuel permitholders to use some of their revenue from one business to subsidize another.
“I’ve had discussions with the 1/ST people, and I’ve told them, just get rid of the slot machines. Hand them back,” Pizzo said. “Because I want you to build affordable housing. I want you to build commercial spaces. … Because [Gulfstream Park is] not even close to being at its highest and best use as a racetrack.”
Still, Pizzo said that he supported the industry, but not in its current direction, and he said that the vote providing a seven-year “glide path” would force the industry to reckon with its future in a way that it would not in the absence of the legislation.
“This had to happen today so a conversation is had,” Pizzo said, addressing the dozens of horse constituents who had just testified. “Everyone up here feels very, very passionately about you and your future. I’m not a fan of the casino, of the slot machines, I’m not. But that’s leverage to make sure we accommodate your futures. . . . That conversation is now going to be had.”
