The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board scrapped at a Wednesday meeting plans for the construction of a casino and racetrack venue in Lawrence County. Talks about the 250-acre gambling complex first emerged in 2004 but, as it seems, they will never get to actual materialization.
If Lawrence Downs Casino and Racing Resort, as the casino-racetrack venue would have been called, was given the nod by Board members, it would have been built in Mahoning Township not far from New Castle. The facility would have been Pennsylvania’s first one to feature both casino games and a racetrack.
Six different investor groups have expressed interest in building the racino since 2004. Harness racing track and casino operator Endeka Entertainment, LP, was the company in charge of the Lawrence County project over the past years. It held a harness racing license for the future gambling venue but was looking to obtain a gambling one as well. Following the Wednesday meeting, the chance of acquiring such a license seems to be very slim.
Endeka Entertainment had even previously formed a partnership with casino operator Penn National Gaming for the operation of the Lawrence County facility. However, the partnership eventually fell apart as Penn National Gaming decided to abandon the project citing poor market conditions in the regional gambling industry as the main reason.
The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board did not provide local media with details about its decision to block Lawrence Downs’ construction. However, people with knowledge of the matter have suggested that financial issues and competition concerns were the two main factors to have resulted in the project’s abandonment.
Endeka Entertainment has been trying to secure the amount of $205 million from various banks to finance the venue’s construction. After paying about $65 million in licensing fees, the company would have had $140 million left, which would have probably been insufficient to complete a project of this type and scale.
If completed, Lawrence Downs would have featured 1,500 slot machines, 38 table games, and a one-mile harness-racing track. The complex would have created 1,337 temporary and 600 permanent jobs in a region with a 6.5% unemployment rate and numerous financial issues to cope with, proponents noted after the announcement that the project was scrapped.
