Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed a bill into law last week that replaces the state Harness Racing Commission and Horse Racing Commission with a single nine-member Horse Racing Commission to regulate both harness and thoroughbred racing in the state.
Among the new panel’s first tasks will be to consider and approve a harness racing license for Lawrence Downs, the racino project in Western Pennsylvania that is vying for the last available Category 1 casino license in the state. The racing license is a prerequisite for the casino license.
Endeka Entertainment, a Philadelphia-based consortium of investors headed by so-called “Tomato King” Joseph Procacci, took over the Lawrence Downs project last year. The group is the latest of several owners the project has gone through in the decade since it was first proposed.
Members of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board recently issued a report estimating that background checks of previously unknown “major players” that are part of Endeka are likely to drag the approval process for the new racino into 2017. (Procacci, one of the unsuccessful applicants for the second Philadelphia casino license, already has been vetted by regulatory authorities.)
The former Harness Racing Commission granted Endeka a six-month extension of the deadline to present financing information for the racino project, which is planned as the state’s only mile-long harness track, to include a casino offering 1,500 slot machines, 43 table games and 15 poker tables. Presumably, the new combined commission will honor that deadline.
Wolf will name five members to the new commission, with two each of the other four member selected by the state House and Senate’s Republican and Democratic caucuses, respectively.
