Saratoga racino breaks ground for long-planned hotel

Ground was broken Wednesday for a new hotel at Saratoga Casino and Raceway, an amenity corporate and city officials said is needed to keep it competitive as new gambling venues open around New York state.

“We believe it will be transformational for the facility and will allow us to remain competitive in this market for years to come,” said James Featherstonhaugh, secretary of the racino corporation.

Featherstonhaugh was among speakers at a ceremony marking the start of construction on the $34 million hotel, to be attached to the north end of the casino building where a harness racing practice track was formerly located.

After a decade of planning, construction of the 108-room hotel is expected to take about a year, with it expected to open in the summer of 2016.

“I am assured that next Memorial Day we will be here for the grand opening,” Featherstonhaugh said.

Guest amenities in the 123,000-square-foot, four-story hotel will include an indoor pool and fitness center, lobby bar, meeting rooms and a fine-dining restaurant. The architecture, racino officials said, will reflect Saratoga’s Victorian-historic building designs.

“This hotel will give guests something they’ve been long-requesting and will allow us to remain a competitive economic driver in the region for years to come,” said Dan Gerrity, president of Saratoga Casino and Raceway.

Local opposition to the plans largely disappeared last year after an events center some feared would take business away from the downtown City Center was removed from the plans.

The racino, which offers video lottery terminal games on 1,700 machines, lost out on the opportunity to bid for a full-gaming casino when the City Council in late 2013 voted against the concept. A state casino license was subsequently awarded to the Rivers Casino project in Schenectady, giving the racino major competition just 20 miles away.

Without a hotel, racino officials have warned of a likely decline in the 2.5 million visitors it receives annually because of competition from the Schenectady casino, which is scheduled to open in 2017. But with the hotel, “we expect to compete hard, and we expect to do very well,” Featherstonhaugh said.

Todd Shimkus, president of the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber never took an official position during the controversy about gambling expansion and the hotel, but he now feels the hotel is needed for the area’s economic health.

“The hotel project has to go forward in order to be able to compete with the other venues that are getting casinos,” Shimkus said.

He said the fact that guests would be staying at the casino, a couple miles from downtown, doesn’t mean they won’t have an impact on downtown’s restaurants and shops.

“They will come downtown, they will golf here, they will spend money here. That’s the advantage of having a hotel here,” Shimkus said. “We’re still going to have a lot of amenities that people want.”

Mayor Joanne Yepsen said she supports the project because it will benefit harness racing at the track and help ensure the continuation of the $2.3 million in revenue the city receives annually as the racino’s host community.

“My concern is horse racing, and what will protect horse racing is additional revenue coming in,” Yepsen said.

Thomas McTygue, president of the Saratoga Harness Horsepersons’ Association, cited similar reasoning for supporting the hotel.

“As long as the business here is doing well, that’s our concern,” McTygue said.

A portion of the proceeds from the VLTs since they were installed in 2004 has gone to increasing purses paid on harness races.

Construction — a joint venture between Kirchhoff-Consigli Construction Management and Tishman Construction — is expected to create 500 jobs. Racino officials estimate construction will generate more than $5.4 million in statewide economic output and $1.75 million in state and local tax revenue.

Once the hotel opens, racino officials estimate it will create 200 to 300 permanent jobs; the racino currently has 400 full-time and 200 part-time employees. Yepsen said that’s another reason to support the plans.

“We always need more good-paying jobs in Saratoga Springs,” she said.

Racino officials have scheduled a job fair from 3 to 7 p.m. Monday, June 8, at the facility.

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