Horse racing shut down permanently at Hastings Park
 

Horse racing shut down permanently at Hastings Park in Vancouver
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/horse-racing-shut-down-permanently-hastings-park

Last week

https://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/...rk-to-lose-slots-revenue-starting-jan-31

Sad to see, that has been a part of the city for a century probably.

133 years! Longer than almost everything in this city

Did horse racing ever become popular with the HK immigrant population? It stills seems to be popular over there?

That means X amount of acres from the track and stables will be available.

New Hotel & Casino?

Maybe some housing... and the PNE and Playland likely want in on the action too.

Seems very unlikely even with this council that they could try to stick any housing in Hastings Park. I mean sticking housing/hotels on the parking lots facing East Hastings is probably more viable than any in the park.

Sounds like there will be some sort of development there, besides the soccer stadium.

https://theprovince.com/sports/socce...s-stadium-next

Gerber mentioned building residential somehow with BC Place. And that the MOU made no sense to anyone.

https://www.biv.com/news/real-estate/lea...ps-bc-place-at-impasse-mls-boss-11463132

Welp, the City has to give the Whitecaps something. A stadium will cost around 400 million, with probly no tax money, so a residential real estate development with the stadium is a must. Some residential towers at the corner of McGill and Renfrew would work. There's a parking lot, and an industrial building, so not taking actual park space, but I would go further than that.

Just raise property taxes and give them money. :D

they simulcast the races from Hong Kong sometimes which drew a late night crowd a while back, but I think online betting now takes the lion's share of foreign betting, I'm not sure if the local Asian community ever got into the local product all that much, I think the biggest days here are things like the Deighton Cup that brings the younger well off crowd out in big numbers.

anyone else think this looks a little shady how fast things happened in the background with the city and government, a lot of jobs just disappeared overnight and Sim looked pretty smiley in the live conference broadcast today

It's not his fault no one cares about horse racing.

they are still killing a lot of jobs and economic activity around the industry, in a time when we need jobs desperately, a new stadium is just moving things from the current location downtown and other than construction won't create any new economic activity rather just simply moving it

The jobs were “killed” by the lack of demand for those jobs. We live in a free market democracy, the racecourse isn’t a make work project.

And if you want a make work project you have to have enough of a political pull to make it a pet issue of some MLA/MP etc.

It died because the Province took away their casino revenue.

TBF most of the city's other pro sports aren't dependent on just $8-10 million to stay in the black.

Their casino operations are not even popular.

Parq generated $6.2 million in the same time period.

They said they needed an additional $20 million per year to support the industry.

https://canadianthoroughbred.com/magazine/business/the-decline-of-racing-in-bc/#:~:text=the%20group%20collects%20all%20the,with%20a%20$4%20million%20grant.

I've lived here 35 years and have never met anyone that went to the racecourse. Was there a certain demographic that it attracted?

Exciting Times ahead for that Property.

Seems like an older demographic. Like anyone younger that goes to Deighton Cup and wants to feel like some UK aristocrat probably doesn't touch foot at Hastings for the rest of the year.

Horse racing used to be huge in Ontario but now they give them $105 million dollars a year to support it (for 19 years)

https://thelocal.to/breakdown-at-the-racetrack/

There is zero chance horse racing will ever be popular in Vancouver again.

I bet anyone that holds real estate in that area is likely real happy with this announcement.

Actually wagering has been climbing in recent years despite the efforts of the government casino competition harming them, racing brings in millions of dollars of wagering in the province as a whole (a lot of the betting on the product is done online now so they may handle millions of dollars in wagering even with smaller on track attendance). The key is they need the facility to hold the racing, and this is the rug that the government allowed to be pulled out from under them with little planning and notice.

There's still Cloverdale right?

Closed in August

https://globalnews.ca/news/11347818/its-...ck-to-surrey-horse-racing-track-closure/

$8-10 million is chump change compared to what other tenants could be earning on that same site.

Oh well sounds like that business model really on the outs!

that one seemingly happened overnight too which had many shaking their heads wondering what was going on

It's weird that both of these tracks lease land from their respective cities. I thought Cloverdale track owned their own land.

"“This revitalization will deliver new housing and public spaces, support the $3-billion hospital, expand recreation like the Sports & Ice Complex, and create a stronger venue network for cultural events,” "

Seems like a better us of City-owned land. I assume this was planned in advance for all this stuff going in here?

Seems like they've been more actively working on the town centre plan for Cloverdale for the past few years. The hospital is beside it and opens in 2030.

https://www.surrey.ca/renovating-buildin...nd-use-plans/cloverdale-town-centre-plan

But they didn't tell anyone prior to reclaiming the land so there was zero engagement with the racers.

It's as space-intensive as golf but with less revenue. Doubt consultation would've changed anything.

None of that really excuses the government rug pull.

They threatened to close/not renew their lease back in 2011 so unless they were totally naive the threat was always there that the industry wasn't sustainable.

https://www.biv.com/news/archives/golden-goals63267-8230539

there was a turning point when Apollo Global Management, a large multinational investment firm, bought in a few years back

not exactly, they still have significant revenue from wagering that could keep things going, just not as viable to not also share in the casino profits that are part of the racing grandstand facilities which were given the casino license as a partnership with racing there in the first place

they died because their venues, which have been and were supposed to be agricultural based venues since the beginning, were taken away from them overnight, leaving a lot of people whose entire lifetime careers and skills were in the industry now out of work and facing difficult times

Couple years ago I went to the racetrack for the first (and only time) to see a Yuks Yuks show on a weekend night. The place was both dead and a dump. The bar was like going back in time to the 70s and clearly nobody cared about making the place look nice.

I thought back then that it was time to pull the plug on this

Watch in a few years they'll add table games to the Hastings casino and they'll make a few hundred million a year with a modern casino.

the last few times I went there mostly in 2024, it was very dead, like maybe less than 50 people. The parking sucks, getting there from transit sucks, the food options don't have any draw. I think having Grand Villa so close for East Van doesn't help it. The game selection was fine, they had a few harder to find slots but meh.

The stadium is still 5 years away, if this current plan works out, so maybe this will expedite plans for an Expo Line extension up Hastings. It's 5 km's to get to Hastings and Renfrew, so it would only be 3 billion if you terminate there.

What plans for an Expo Line extension up Hastings? There's no money for the UBC from Arbutus line yet. Anything other than a faster bus service along Hastings is in the Fantasy thread, not TransLink's current capital plans. (And at this point, there's no timeline for a future stadium, if the idea turns out to be viable, which has still to be tested).

Jesus man, have a drink or smoke some weed or something.

Rail transit up Hastings has been talked about by the City, so that answers your "what plans?" question. The idea for a stadium is obviously viable. The City has said so.

The Coquitlam casino just got sold to a First Nation from Vancouver Island. They already bought River Rock, Chances Maple Ridge, Casino Nanaimo and Elements Casino Victoria

https://www.nsnews.com/the-mix/snuneymux...n-casino-vancouver-in-coquitlam-11652227

I am a member of that band. I am not sure I'm comfortable investing in all these casinos. I'd like to see some property acquisition and development into rental towers. That's a lot more future proof.

As long as the racetrack is still part of Hastings Park, it's under the Park Board's control... and the Park Board shot down condos on the golf courses just two years ago. Recreation purposes only, period.

It's important to note that Broadway's cost per km uses pre-Covid numbers; rumours suggest UBCx may cost up to $6 billion now, and that's just 6-7km through the 'burbs. And since it and the Purple Line come first, it seems Hastings will have to wait.

The land is (potentially) being leased to the Whitecaps for 99 years. How does the Parks Board have a say in what they do with their land?

The same way the City gets a say in what the MST do in Jericho? Lease or no lease, they're still building in the CoV; Senakw gets a free pass because it's technically not part of the city.

If/when the stadium is built, the land will be rezoned to accomadate an entertainment district. It wont be a park.