Debate over Woodbine Racetrack casino resumes at city hall

Executive committee is considering whether to report on expanding gaming at the Woodbine Racetrack.

Thestar.com
March 25, 2015
By Jennifer Pagliaro

Toronto City Council’s executive committee has reopened the debate on expanded gaming at Woodbine Racetrack.

Councillors and Mayor John Tory voted almost unanimously on Wednesday to ask staff to review “technical planning requirements, and merits and potential risks” of any new development for increased gambling at Woodbine.

Councillor James Pasternak was the lone dissenting vote.

The proposal for a so-called Woodbine Live! entertainment and gambling complex that was floated in 2013 ended when a partnership between Woodbine and The Cordish Companies, based in the U.S., fell through.

The previous executive committee voted 24-20 to ban expanded gaming at Woodbine in the midst of a contentious debate over a proposed downtown casino in 2012.

While the Woodbine Entertainment Group wants the city to take another look at the possibility of an expanded gaming centre in Rexdale, some councillors are questioning how that expansion would take shape.

Outgoing Woodbine president and CEO Nick Eaves urged committee members to vote for the review. After answering councillors’ questions, Eaves told reporters it’s not for Woodbine to decide what could be built at the racetrack.

“I think that’s work that will have to be discovered through the process,” Eaves said, offering that gaming tables and increased restaurant and bar space are some additions expected to be considered. Currently the racetrack houses more than 3,000 Ontario Lottery and Game Corporation slot machines.

Eaves would not put a number on how many gaming tables or other new additions Woodbine would like the OLG and the city to consider.

“That will be the subject of the public consultation process. So, working with the OLG and the city and the province, what we’ll do as the landowner is consult broadly and identify what the priorities are and frame with those participants exactly what an expansion program should look like,” Eaves said.

David Shiner (Ward 24, Willowdale) and other several other councillors quizzed Woodbine and city staff, seeking more details. Shiner said he wants those details out before a public consultation takes place, calling it a “secret” proposal because it doesn’t outline what Woodbine would like to see there.

“I don’t know what road you’re going down,” Shiner told Eaves at the meeting. “I don’t know the size of it and how you’re really going to deliver these jobs.”

Eaves explained the process is for OLG to select an operator - not Woodbine - that would handle gaming on their lands. He said a “comprehensive development plan” would follow that selection process.

“If Woodbine Entertainment Group controlled the process, then we would indeed have a much more developed view of all of those answers. We don’t,” Eaves said.

Tory clashed with Shiner, whom he appointed to the committee, telling him the report in question would cover some of the questions being asked.

Premier Kathleen Wynne, who was cool to the idea of a downtown Toronto casino as presented in 2012, said Wednesday she’s pleased city council is talking about expansion at Woodbine.

“The fact of the horse racing at Woodbine means to me that it's a different situation. There's already gaming there,” she said. “I’m very interested in seeing the integration of gaming including horse racing. I think that it makes some sense for city council to look at it again.”

Any decision, she added, is purely up to council.

“We always maintained that the municipalities were going to make these decisions, that there wasn’t going to be an imposition of a casino,” said Wynne, whose government is looking for revenues to help erase a $12.5-billion deficit by 2018.

“Having said that, I was surprised at the time of the vote around the downtown casino that the Woodbine casino was part of that. I saw them as different cases.”

City staff confirmed Wednesday that council would need to decide whether they support a casino no later than this fall to align with the OLG’s process.

Already, Tory and other councillors have expressed their willingness to revisit the previous committee’s ban on expanded gaming.

Councillor Rob Ford (Ward 2, Etobicoke North), whose ward contains the racetrack and as mayor championed the idea of a casino there, did not attend the morning session of Wednesday’s meeting.