NYRA Lifts Curtain on New, Year-Round Belmont Park

For the past three years, New York's horsemen and fans have battled traffic jams to spend the late spring, early summer, and fall racing dates at rusting Aqueduct Racetrack. They have journeyed to Saratoga Race Course for the Belmont Stakes (G1) and Fourth of July Weekend. On Sept.18 all of that, along with the landscape of New York racing, will change. The Big A is now a part of racing lore and in its place there's a sleek, glass-enclosed, ultra-modern, $500 million Belmont Park meticulously designed to fit the needs of both horsemen and fans in the 21st century. Friday's opening-day card, which showcases Forever Young (JPN) in the $1 million Jockey Club Gold Cup Stakes (G1), will give horsemen and a sold-out crowd of 6,000 its first taste of a new era for the New York Racing Association. READ: Forever Young Adds Star Power to Gold Cup, New Belmont There will no doubt be glitches but, on the whole, the day promises to provide a new and exciting experience inside a state-of-the-art facility and redesigned grounds that should suit every type of fan and participant. Only two of the facility's five floors will be open Friday, but even that limited exposure should treat fans to a new level of comfort and viewing the races in a downstate setting. "It's a soft opening, but I think people will get a feel for the level of hospitality and the openness of the new backyard and the paddock," NYRA CEO and president Dave O'Rourke said. "I think people who have seen the Saratoga backyard will see a modern version of that at Belmont. It's going to be fun to show off the building and then get right back to finishing it up for the Wood Memorial (in April) so we can show the whole thing." Crowds will be limited to 6,000 Friday and 4,000 thereafter until more areas of the grandstand open in the coming months. Still, the electricity of the new building and grounds should spark far more interest in visiting Belmont Park than three years ago when its historic but cavernous grandstand was a ghost town on most days. "It will offer the everyday player a much more comfortable place to be than Aqueduct or the old Belmont," O'Rourke said. "Everything will be elevated from the hot dogs to the dining in the lounges and restaurants. It will have a place for owners in the winter and give people a reason to come to the racetrack and that's important. We are trying to adapt for everyone, while also giving us a foundation to grow. There's 20 acres of green space and we'll see how people interact with it. We will eventually have outdoor shows, whether it's a Christmas show or a car show or plays in the paddock. We have 14 acres of space in the infield and next year we are already packed with the Belmont Stakes and Breeders' Cup, but we will also be announcing more things that are not racing-related." O'Rourke stressed the new complex will give NYRA a golden opportunity to work with its neighbors on the campus, the New York Islanders who call the UBS Arena home. "Our relationship with the Islanders is great. We're going to cross-promote during hockey season once we are a little further along in the construction to utilize the backyard for their fans as well as ours. We now have a campus in Elmont, New York, that has a train station with lots of upside in terms of what we can do there," he said. Though the building is about a third of the size of the former structure, there is nothing small about the roughly 300,000-square-foot edifice. There is plenty of room for fans to gather or sit in a glass-enclosed building that offers great views of a paddock twice the size of the old one and the racetrack with its new and improved videoboard. There will be at least seven main areas for dining or sitting and spending the day open Friday, including an area limited to NYRA Bets account holders. Among the four main choices on the first floor, all of which are first come, first seated with no cover charges, is Big Red's at the west end of the building that pays tribute to Secretariat and contains memorabilia of his legendary career. On the second floor are several reserved dining and hospitality areas with more to come on the upper floors. "We have a very strong flexibility. Most racetracks have one big restaurant. I think the old Garden Terrace (at Belmont) seated 1,800. We specifically limited these areas to 200 or 250 people which allows you to create different environments. You can scale the building up or down and make it feel energetic," O'Rourke said. Forever Young, the 2025 Breeders' Cup Classic (G1) winner, will be prepping for a planned start in the Oct. 31 edition at Keeneland on a new main track that mirrors Saratoga in composition while retaining its 1 1/2-mile circumference. The two turf courses have been widened and a fourth Tapeta surface has been added for off-the-turf races and winter racing. All four tracks were constructed with a drainage system second to none in the industry, giving the racing surfaces the same kind of modern-day boost as the new grandstand. For horsemen, the return of racing to Belmont after a three-year hiatus means a return to walking horses from their stalls to the paddock instead of coping with the tortuous traffic on the Belt Parkway or Van Wyck Expressway. "I'm excited about it," said trainer Chad Brown, fresh off a sixth straight Saratoga title. "New, fresh courses, especially the turf courses. Many more distances to choose from for my turf horses. Belmont has always been the main hub of my operation. I launched my career here. It's the only division of my stable that's year-round and most of my Breeders' Cup winners have trained at Belmont. "To get back to Belmont under normal circumstances again and have it fully operational from a training standpoint is ideal for my business and I am really looking forward to that." Friday's opening day card after a 1,167-day hiatus features eight undercard races that averaged 14 entrants, and with Forever Young in the featured Gold Cup, a Breeders' Cup Challenge Series: Win and You're In event, it will give the sport a glimpse of what's to come as the newest Belmont Park grows into the tradition of great racing that was a hallmark of the 1968-2023 structure which was known as "Beautiful Belmont Park" when it opened. "It looks great. It's going to be exciting to have a modern, new facility with the Tapeta, dirt, turf," Hall of Fame trainer Todd Pletcher said. "It looks like it has everything. There are always going to be critics when you do something new, but it's great news for racing."