March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Brewer bidder asks for betting parlor review

Unlike the new year, off-track wagering in the Bangor area may not arrive on schedule.

On Dec. 12, by a 3-2 vote, the Maine State Harness Racing Commission gave tentative approval to a Larry Mahaney-Charles and James Day partnership to operate an OTB at its location, The Inside Track on Union Street. At that time, Jim Day said he expected to have the new OTB operating about March 1.

But Peter Martin of Waterville, whose location received two of the five votes, said this week he wants another chance at the next commission meeting to tout the merits of his location, formerly The Cottage, on Route 1A in Brewer.

The Bangor vote was a tentative approval by the commission. The final vote for a Bangor OTB location is scheduled at the commission’s meeting at 1 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 6, at the Holiday Inn in Augusta.

Martin said this week that he has received a request from the racing commission that he and the Mahaney-Day group submit an outline to the attorney general’s office this week with specifics of why they consider themselves best suited to be selected as the OTB applicant.

The other two Bangor OTB applicants, Frank Jordan at Legends Restaurant and Mark Wellman of Pardners Western Food and Fun Restaurant, said they had not received any communications from the racing commission since the Bangor meeting. Wellman, however, said he would be at the Jan. 6 commission meeting.

“We think they ought to give us a license,” he said. “We went by the book and did everything we were asked to do.”

Martin said the Bangor vote “certainly isn’t etched in stone. In my opinion, it was a straw vote to see where the commission was headed. If they were confident of their votes at Bangor, they wouldn’t be allowing what’s transpiring now. They would have allowed their vote to stand and would have ratified it.

“Again,” Martin said, “it is my opinion that the commission is leaving themselves wide open at the court level.”

Martin believes that if the commission reopens the hearings on Jan. 6, and if his group can present new testimony and new material that makes commissioners “doubt their decision, and we can sway one vote making it 3-2 in our favor, then an appeal isn’t necessary.”

Martin said he will file a court appeal after the January meeting if there is any evidence that a legal mistake was made during the award process in the way the commission arrived at their decision.

“That’s the only way we can overturn their decision,” Martin said. “If you figure the Mahaney team and myself are competetent people who know how to operate off-track betting, and my financial resources and the Mahaney-Day financial resources are effective enough to run each OTB facility, then what do you have left – the facility itself. That’s what I’m basing my decision on,” Martin said.

He also said that if the commission awards two licenses to the Bangor area, “I would still have a basis for appeal,” Martin said. “But, if they think they can operate two OTBs in the Bangor market successfully, along with a live extended harness meet in the summer, they are sadly mistaken.”

Martin said it is the people and sports fans in the Bangor who will suffer the most by any prolonged delays in the awarding process.

“I don’t blame the commission for one reason,” he said. “Every decision they make is a virgin decision because they have never had four applications to deal with before. However, I don’t agree with their preliminary decision. I think it was wrong,” he concluded.


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