Churchill Downs Incorporated has secured a location for a historical racing machine and entertainment venue to add to its portfolio of HHR locations across Kentucky.
The company has confirmed that the venue will be in eastern Daviess County, just outside of the Owensboro city limits by the Indiana border.
Constructing the new venue has been identified as a way of supporting the purse funding of Ellis Park race meets and the venue will serve as an annex of the track.
Churchill Downs will provide continued updates throughout the development of the venue as well as any investment plans to support the project in the coming months.
Construction of the project has not begun yet but will do so in the coming months with CDI set to announce a precise location in due course.
Ellis Park has unexpectedly become a much more important part of CDI’s business recently, given the horse injury and death incidents at Churchill Downs racetrack in recent months.
Earlier this month the race track operator suspended the remainder of its Spring meet after “an unusual level of horse injuries”.
Following this, the rest of the season has been relocated to Ellis Park Racing & Gaming until July 3 at the earliest.
“The team at Churchill Downs takes great pride in our commitment to safety and strives to set the highest standard in racing, consistently going above and beyond the regulations and policies that are required,” said Bill Carstanjen, CEO of CDI.
“What has happened at our track is deeply upsetting and absolutely unacceptable. Despite our best efforts to identify a cause for the recent horse injuries, and though no issues have been linked to our racing surfaces or environment at Churchill Downs, we need to take more time to conduct a top-to-bottom review of all of the details and circumstances so that we can further strengthen our surface, safety, and integrity protocols.”
