Raceway unaffected by construction Development plan scheduled for paddock, barns on three-year timetable

A lot of dirt and dust is being kicked up at Bass Park these days, but it has nothing to do with horse racing.

The Main Street entrance to Bass Park, Bangor Raceway, and the Bangor Auditorium and Civic Center has been closed for much of the last week as construction crews install a 4-foot diameter sewer line.

“Basically, they’re putting in a new drain that will connect to a retention pond on the back 40 which will be in a previously wooded lot between the back side of the big [Bass Park] parking lot and Interstate 395,” said Mike Dyer, Bass Park director.

The sewer line project is part of the ongoing construction of the new Hollywood Slots Gaming Complex across the street, and although it may slow or inconvenience people going to any of the Bass Park facilities, it’s not a total hindrance.

It’s also not connected with any of Penn National Gaming Inc.’s future construction and renovation plans for Bangor Raceway’s paddock and barn facilities, although that work will be commencing sometime late in the fall.

“That’s totally a separate project,” Dyer said. “As part of the lease agreement with the city, they’re dealing with the aging barns and they’re going to take the paddock stall area north of the grandstand, where horses are housed on race days and turn it into a 96-stall paddock that’ll give them more capacity.”

Jon Johnson, general manager of Hollywood Slots at Bangor and Bangor Raceway/Off-Track Betting, says the 21,000-square-foot paddock project is the first stage of a three- to four-year development plan which will eventually make Bangor Raceway a “ship-in” track.

“That work won’t begin until toward the end of this year,” said Johnson. “It’ll be in three phases: First, we’ll have to take down what used to be the old paddock, the open stalls next to the grandstand area, and the walk-through corral area beyond the racing office. We hope to do that by the end of this calendar year. Then we’d construct the new paddock.”

Phase three would involve the demolition of four barns (A, B, C, and D), the grading of those grounds and creating a parking area for horse trailers.

“That would be a huge improvement over what’s there now,” Johnson said. “Now they have to park on that dangerous, sometimes muddy road which has a tricky hill they have to walk horses over.”

Barns E and F, the two closest to the Buck Street entrance, will be kept and utilized by horsemen as long as they remain structurally sound.

“That could be 2010 or beyond…. Whenever,” Johnson said. “We’ve patched the roofs and rewired them, but they can’t be maintained forever, especially with no floors and bare earth. When they can no longer be maintained, we’d tear them down, grade that area, and put up a warehouse for our own equipment.”

Johnson said the work is being done deliberately and in phases to allow horse owners and racers plenty of time to make alternate arrangements and/or get used to Bangor’s switch to ship-in status with not many horses being stabled on the grounds.