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Thursday, July 24, 2008

Chalmers Group To Argue for Racino Today

By Charles D. Brunt
Journal Staff Writer
       Albuquerque-based auto dealer Don Chalmers and his associates will pitch their plan for a $55 million racetrack/casino for Tucumcari during a special meeting today before the New Mexico Racing Commission.
    The meeting is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. in the Tucumcari Convention Center.
    Commissioners have already heard from two other groups that have applied for a license to open the state's sixth — and, for the next 29 years, its final — racino.
    Pojoaque Pueblo, which has owned the shuttered Downs at Santa Fe since 1996, presented its case for reopening that track as a racino Tuesday in Santa Fe. A group called Horse Racing at Raton touted its racino plan to the commission July 10.
    The state, which currently has five racinos, renegotiated its gambling compacts with tribes last year, agreeing to extend the compacts through the year 2037 and to cap the number of racinos in the state at six until then.
    Chalmers' group, Coronado Partners, hopes to build a new horse racing track and casino on 245 acres adjacent to Interstate 40 on Tucumcari Boulevard. The 550,000-square-foot facility would include a casino with 600 slot machines, Chalmers said earlier this week.
    Although New Mexico racinos typically run live horse race meets for several weeks a year, they are allowed to keep their casinos open year-round. A portion of casino revenues are, by law, earmarked for horse-racing purses.
    Chalmers is proposing a 52-day race meet for the spring 2010, with 10 races per day and an estimated $220,000 average daily purse.
    The facility, named Coronado Park Racetrack Casino, would create 300 new jobs, Chalmers said, and provide a much-needed boost to the Tucumcari economy.
    Citing a 2007 study by the University of New Mexico's Bureau of Business and Economic Research, Chalmers' group said Tucumcari has a lower median family income than Santa Fe or Raton, and needs the jobs the racino would bring.
    Chalmers, a regent for the University of New Mexico, owns auto dealerships in Albuquerque, Rio Rancho and Santa Fe.