Thursday, Jan. 3, 2002 | 10:06 a.m.
SUNLAND PARK, N.M. -- Sunland Park general manager Harold Payne has a nice problem in today's shaky economic landscape -- figuring out how much more money the track's expanded casino will bring in.
The southern New Mexico horse racing track -- a mecca of prosperity ever since the state's tracks were allowed to open casinos -- is finishing up a $15 million renovation and expansion project.
Of that total, $11.5 million went for construction of a two-story addition to the casino and to buy another 300 slot machines. The top floor will house up to 450 more slot machines and a new restaurant with views of the racetrack. The bottom floor features the Signature Showroom, where entertainers will perform before audiences of up to 600.
The Legislature voted in 1998 to allow the state's four racetracks to open casinos with up to 300 slot machines at each track. That number has doubled now that the Interior Department has approved new gambling compacts between the state and most of the Indian pueblos that operate casinos in New Mexico.
The tracks will be able to increase the number of slot machines they run from 300 to 600 and each track also may lease up to 150 more machines from another track that doesn't use its full allotment of 600 machines.
Sunland, which for years lost money, has been a big winner in the marriage of slot machines and race horses. The track had total revenues of $45 million in 2000, with the casino's gross revenues totaling $35 million. How much casino revenues will jump with the expansion is what Payne expects to find out soon.
"We really don't know," Payne said. "I've budgeted at least a 25 percent increase for the first month. Some people are saying double what we're doing now, but I can't see that. On weekends, there's a demand for the additional machines."
Sunland Park started the expansion work on May 1, months before the Interior Department approved the new compacts. If the department hadn't approved the compacts, Sunland's expansion would have amounted to a white elephant.
"We bet on the come," said Payne, using gambling terminology to explain that Sunland took a chance that the Interior Department would sign off on the new compacts.
Since a percentage of the slot machine revenues go into horse racing purses, the amount of money that horses have been running for at Sunland over the past two years has skyrocketed.
During the current 78-day meet, the track will pay out just over $10 million in purse money. That compares to a total purse fund of about $2.5 million the year before the casino opened. Statewide, a study commissioned by the four racetracks earlier this year showed that total purse money jumped from $9.9 million in 1997 to more than $31 million in 2000.
Fifteen of this year's stakes races at Sunland will have purses of more than $100,000. Among them is the $300,000 Championship at Sunland Park, a new race that will be run on Dec. 29 and will attract some of the best quarter horses in the country.
As the purses have gone up, so have the numbers of horses who are coming in from other states to run at Sunland. It's routine now to see horses running at Sunland that earlier this year were racing at California tracks like Santa Anita and Bay Meadows.
That has made the competition a lot tougher and is forcing New Mexico horse owners and trainers to buy or breed better runners.
"It's going to get tougher and tougher," said trainer John Stinebaugh, who has raced in New Mexico and Texas for years. "I asked the racing secretary recently what the future of the track might be and his advice was 'don't buy any cheap horses."'
Sunland's bottom purse now is $3,200 and Stinebaugh said it's likely to go up to $4,000 or $5,000 by the time the current meet ends in April.
Casino cash also is helping the track finance some major renovation work on the horse racing side. The track this fall bought five new state-of-the-art aluminum barns, at a cost of $1.5 million. It's part of a plan to replace most, if not all of the barns, many of which date back to the track's opening in 1959.
"You can't want it to be any better than this," said trainer Roy Marcom, who has stalls in the new barns.
The track also spent $1.2 million for a new toteboard and 13 1/2 foot by 17 foot video screen that's located in the infield and shows replays of races. The track also spent $40,000 to build a new chapel. It replaced an old mobile trailer that Payne bought from a golf course in El Paso years ago.
It seems that these days, money is no object at Sunland.
While eating lunch recently, Payne noted he had just spent $27,000 for a new car that will be given away as one of the slot machine jackpots.
"Before, (the casino opened) we couldn't spent $27," he said.
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