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Sometimes it doesn’t take much to make a man happy. Take Fred Nichols, for instance. Something as simple as working electricity and heat will do.
Nichols, the president of Bangor Raceway, is a happy man these days. He has a well-lighted and warm working place in downtown Bangor.
Nichols’ old office at Bangor Raceway had no heat, partial electricity and a door that iced shut in the winter.
Nichols spent nine years opening that jammed door and now, entering his 10th, a savior has come along in the form of Hawaiian businessman Shawn Scott.
Scott has some deep pockets and is ready to unload some of his money on the city through a variety of renovation projects at the harness racing track, and the building of a convention center and a luxury hotel.
Of course, having slot machines at the racetrack would be a big help to Scott’s investment and that’s part of the operation at 52 Main St.
Nichols, et al. are in a “get the signatures mode” at the moment. They need 50,519 signatures on a petition to get the slot machine question on the ballot next year. The signatures, Nichols seems to think, will come easily enough. The actual vote may be another matter.
They will likely face opposition from people who don’t care for gambling in their state and members from the organized Casinos NO! which, in a press release, seems to think the folks wanting to build a casino in the southern part of the state and the folks favoring slots are in cahoots.
Nichols will tell you slots are necessary for harness racing to survive here in Maine. He believes Scarborough Downs will suffer from the switch to Standardbred racing from thoroughbred at Rockingham Park in New Hampshire. The future would appear to be bright for Bangor Raceway if that is true. Fewer racing days at Scarborough could mean more for Bangor.
More racing days won’t matter much without slots. Nichols sees Maine being surrounded by states and provinces with slot machines being available.
He says Massachusetts is going to get slots soon. Rockingham is attempting to get them. Pennsylvania will have them, New York is getting them beginning in January. Ontario and Quebec already have them.
He says getting slots is a “defense mechanism,” that racing could “die on the vine” here because without slots, horses won’t be available for racing. Their owners will take them to where the slots are because where there are slots, there are bigger purses.
Nichols and his group are also fighting a certain amount of apathy in the city toward the track.
These people would just as soon see the bulldozers come in and raze the place, rather than raze the place for renovation – the new barns, the new grandstand. They are part of the grand scheme of things.
Nichols likes to put the money in perspective. He says the city’s approval of the renovation plan would mean a windfall of $4 million per year for the city.
He touches on a sore spot for the city when he suggests that a new auditorium could “be built overnight with that kind of money,” that more than 300 jobs would be created through a convention center and hotel and new racetrack, that money from slots would go toward reducing prescription drug costs and toward the University of Maine scholarship fund, that – OK, enough.
Nichols has quite a job to do. Getting the signatures shouldn’t be a problem. Most people understand that a signature on a petition doesn’t necessarily mean agreement with the people standing behind the petition. It merely takes the decision-making process out of the state legislature.
But he must convince one person at a time that slot machines and Shawn Scott’s money are right for Bangor.
It’s a tough job but at least Nichols is warm and can see the person he’s talking to when he’s at work now.
Don Perryman can be reached at 990-8045, 1-800-310-8600, dperrryman@bangordailynews.net
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