Off-track betting returning to Springs after 15-month absence
Off-track betting is set to return to Colorado Springs after a 15-month absence, with the planned opening soon of a betting parlor on Academy Boulevard that will allow local gamblers to watch and bet on horse and dog racing.
Pueblo-based Sky Play LLC plans to open Post Time OTB at 3570 N. Academy Blvd. late this month if it passes inspection next week by the Colorado Racing Events Division, said Donny Talton, a Sky Play partner and manager of Post Time. The 5,500-square-foot betting parlor will be the fourth opened in a little more than a year that’s affiliated with Arapahoe Park, an Aurora horse track that is the only racing venue of any type with betting still operating in the state.
Mile High Racing and Entertainment, owned by Rhode Island-based BLB Investors, shut down a betting parlor it operated at the Rocky Mountain Post Time track at 3701 N. Nevada Ave. after selling the property to investors in September 2009. Talton, who as a real estate agent represented a group that bought the former Pueblo Greyhound Park and reopened last year it as a betting parlor, formed Sky Play in May to open a betting parlor in the Springs.
“The Pueblo OTB has done well, and we hope the previous popularity of dog racing in Colorado Springs remains and will make our facility just as successful,” Talton said. “We will be taking bets on and simulcasting both horse and dog racing.”
Post Time OTB will employ about 10 people and operate initially without a liquor license, but Sky Play eventually plans to seek approval to sell alcoholic beverages, Talton said. Food will be available through a partnership with the nearby Taste of Philly restaurant located in same shopping center, he said. Operating hours are planned from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sundays.
Betting parlors have multiplied across the state since Gov. Bill Ritter signed legislation in 2009 allowing betting parlors to take bets on dog races at out-of-state tracks as long as they maintained an affiliation with any horse or dog track operating in the state. State law previously required an affiliation with an in-state dog track to take bets on races at out-of-state dog tracks, but the state’s remaining dog tracks closed in 2008 amid a dispute with kennel operators,
Since the law changed, betting parlors have opened in Pueblo in December 2009, in Denver in June and in Grand Junction in October. The former Mile High Greyhound Park became a betting parlor after racing there ended in 2008; two other betting parlors have operated in the Denver area since the 1990s. All are affiliated with Arapahoe Park and are regulated by the Racing Events Division of the Colorado Department of Revenue.
