33M Dollar Course Built For New York

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28972, 13 August 1959, Page 4

33M Dollar Course Built For New York

[Fom RAY KERRISON in New York)

The world’s most glamorous race course—a 33-mi 11 iondollar punters’ paradise called Aqueduct will open in New York next month. »

It is designed to woo, then pamper, hundreds of thousands of “little people” who ordinarily do not go to the races.

United States racing officials expect to usher in a new era in the “sport of kings.” ‘‘Everybody 'will be treated like a king at Aqueduct,” says the club committee. As well as luxuriousness, the new course boasts two innovations which the experts now agree should have been obvious to the racing industry years ago.

The saddling paddock and mounting enclosure, usually tucked away behind or at the sides, have been moved out into the open in front of the grandstand.

The huge blue-green track has been designed so that everyone will be able to see all the races.

The 1050 ft-long stands have 20,000 seats, each of which gives an unobstructed view of the whole course.

The ramp space in front of the stands is properly graded for standing spectators. The racing may be seen over people’s heads from anywhere. Because the ramp starts sloping down about 40 feet under an overhanging roof, a punter can see even if he’s standing way back under the stands.

There will be no waiting in line to place bets. The new track has 738 totalisator windows.

The stands are serviced by 18 escalators and nine lifts. For the weary, there are 13 lounge areas, with seating for 14,000. For lunch, the racegoer can pick his style. If it’s hot-dogs, there are 62 concession stands. Aqueduct also has two large selfservice cafeterias and, in the clubhouse, it has a luxurious restaurant that seats 1200 and on clear days offers a view of the Manhattan skyline 10 miles away. To satisfy in-between-race thirsts, the stands have 16 spacious. comfortable bars. The course lies hard by New York’s international airport, and has its own heliport for people who like to go to the races without having to bother with trains, buses or traffic jams. Aqueduct has three tracks—dirt, turf and steeplchase. It will cater for the owner 1 as well as the punter. For its first season--67 days’ racing beginning on September 14—there are no fewer than four 100,000-dollar races.

Horse racing in New York is already a big sport, but some officials think it is being threatened by trotting. Although trotting tracks have been increasing their attendances, the city’s thoroughbred courses have not.

That is what prompted the New York Racing Association, a non-profit group, to gamble 33 million dollars that attractiveness. comfort and convenience could give racing a lift. Old Aqueduct, a brokendown relic of the past, was razed and the new dream-course is the result. The special target of Aquedust is the occasional racegoer usually a small-betting customer, who is out for a pleasant few hours of fresh air and a few brisk walks to the cashier’s window. It is these men and women, rather than real gamblers or serious students of horses, who have been the secret of trotting's success.

New York’s two trotting tracks, Roosevelt and Yonkers, have proved repeatedly that comfort and convenience can win patrons. Both have increased their attendances annually since they were opened. Roosevelt unveiled completely new facilities two years ago. It accommodates 50,000 people, cost 20 million dollars to build and takes second place to no sports structure in spectator comfort.

Patrons watch horses and sulkies spinning around the half-mile

track from glass-enclosed, heated and air-conditioned stands. They may also watch them while they dine in a three-tiered casino. For bar patrons, there is a closedcircuit television system which throws the “action” on to efthigh screens. Evening’s Entertainment Trot officials have found that more couples go to the trots than to the races. Part of the explanation is that trotting makes an evening’s entertainment. Roosevelt has helped turn what was in the United States a country-fair diversion into a big sport. The fastest trotters in the country (and from abroad) are brought here to race. This year’s Messenger Stakes, for example, will be worth more than 150,000 dollars to winning pacers.

Roosevelt this season also has half a dozen other races worth more than 50,000 dollars. Arthur Froehlich, the Californian, pipe-smoking, crew-cut architect who designed .the new Aqueduct, sees the average small punter as a man who needs to express himself, who is in temporary revolt against his environment. “All week long," he says, “he takes orders from his boss, his wife, or society in general. When he goes to the racecourse he wants to show he's smarter than any of them. When he picks a horse, it’s his opinion against the world.” First, Froehlich makes the racecourse spacious, so that his “uncaged tiger” can prowl around freely. Second, there must be comfort and beauty to soothe the punter after his horse gets beaten. Froehlich defeats punter’s depression by splashing his tracks with colour, in the flowers shrubbery, and in the pastels he uses for the course buildings. “The punter must be made to feel that he is on a gay recreation, and that the money he is risking is just another investment in fun not indulgence in a vice,” says the psychologist-architect.