A group of investors headed by Albuquerque businessman Don Chalmers has filed an application to operate the state’s sixth racino.
New Mexico Racing Commission executive director India Hatch confirmed Wednesday that Chalmers’ group, Coronado Partners LLC, had filed a racing license application for a track and casino in Tucumcari.
It’s the first application filed since the Racing Commission, which regulates New Mexico’s pari-mutuel horse racing industry, announced in May that it would accept license applications from June 2 until the close of
business Sept. 2.
Chalmers’ group proposes to build a $60 million facility on 300 acres adjacent to Interstate 40 in Tucumcari. The planned casino will have 600 slot machines, and the track will host an inaugural 56-day live horse racing meet in the summer of 2013.
“I am a longtime supporter of rural economic development in New Mexico,” Chalmers said in a news release. “We believe this racetrack and casino will bring much needed employment and economic opportunity to Tucumcari and Quay County, and I look forward to developing this if given the opportunity.”
Coronado Partners filed for a racing license for a $40 million Tucumcari racino in April 2008 in a four-way competition against La Mesa Racetrack and Casino in Raton; Pojoaque Pueblo, which hoped to revive the shuttered Downs at Santa Fe; and Hidalgo Park in Lordsburg.
The La Mesa proposal by Canadian investor Michael Moldenhauer won the competition and received its racing license in January 2009..
But that license became available last month when the five-member, governor-appointed Racing Commission declared La Mesa’s license invalid because of Moldenhauer’s failure to build the Raton facility and conduct live races by Memorial Day 2010.
Moldenhauer has filed regulatory and court challenges to the revocation of this racing and gaming licenses, including a request in Raton’s 8th Judicial District Court for an injunction to prevent the Racing Commission from issuing a racing license. A hearing on that injunction has been set for Sept. 2 — the deadline for racing license applications.
Competition for the state’s sixth — and for the foreseeable future, likely last — license could heat up by then.
When the state renegotiated its 2001 gaming compacts with casino-operating tribes in 2007, it extended the compacts until 2037, and agreed to limit gambling competition by capping the number of racinos in the state to six.
Unless the compacts, which require tribal casinos pay the state a portion of their revenues, are renegotiated or the compact somehow becomes void, the sixth racino is likely to be the last one built in the state for the next quarter century.
Coronado Partners includes Chalmers; David Vance, president of The Vance Group, which manages racetracks; Larry D. Woolf, president of Navegante Group, which manages casinos; and Brad Friedmutter, CEO of Friedmutter Group, an architectural and design firm.
Chalmers, a University of New Mexico regent, owns car dealerships in Albuquerque, Rio Rancho and Santa Fe.
————————————————————————————————————————————-
July 20, 2011 — Developers To Try Again for Racino in Quay County
By ABQnews Staff
Auto dealer Don Chalmers and Coronado Partners LLC will submit an application today to the New Mexico Racing Commission for a license to build a racetrack and casino in Tucumcari, Warren Frost, executive director of the Quay County Gaming Authority, told the Quay County Sun.
“I am a longtime supporter of rural economic development in New Mexico,” Chalmers said in a statement. “We believe that Coronado Park will bring much needed employment and economic opportunity to Tucumcari and Quay County, and look forward to developing this racetrack and casino if given the opportunity.”
Coronado Partners would like to build the $60 million Coronado Park on 300 acres inside Tucumcari city limits, where all utilities and ancillary infrastructure are already available, developers said. Live racing would be run from May to August during the triple-crown racing season nationally, and a 600-slot casino would be located on Historic Route 66 and Interstate 40.
Frost told the Sun that the proximity of the proposed racetrack to Texas and I-40 would provide easy access to racing and gaming fans from Amarillo and West Texas, bringing much-needed economic activity to Tucumcari and surrounding communities and wouldn’t affect tribal gaming operations or other tracks.
“At this time we believe we are the only entity to apply for the license,” Frost told the Sun. “There are still six more weeks left in the application process.”
Frost said that if granted the license, Coronado Park would create approximately 300 jobs with an annual payroll of nearly $9 million, the Sun reported.
-- Email the reporter at cbrunt@abqjournal.com. Call the reporter at 505-823-3882
