Churchill Downs to build downtown Louisville gambling parlor, entertainment venue
Downtown Louisville is finally getting a gambling venue: Churchill Downs announced on Thursday that it is expanding its historical racing footprint to a new venue that is nowhere near the track itself.
Derby City Gaming Downtown will be at 140 South 4th St., at the corner of South 4th and West market, diagonal to the Kentucky International Convention Center, according to the announcement. The 43,000-square-foot entertainment venue is expected to open in early 2023 with 500 historical racing gambling machines to start.
The venue also will include “a fresh-air gaming area,” three bar concepts, a Kentucky Derby merchandise store and over 200 onsite parking spaces. Construction is expected to begin later this year.
The bars will include a sports bar with a stage for music and live entertainment, a premium bourbon library and a wine and charcuterie lounge.
The new gambling venue will be in the heart of Louisville’s entertainment and dining district, near Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse, Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts, the KFC Yum Center and the Muhammad Ali Center as well as several bourbon tourist attractions. It’s also near access to I64 and a bridge away from Indiana.
Besides the historical flagship track, Churchill already has a gambling parlor in Louisville, Derby City Gaming, on Poplar Level Road. They also operate Oak Grove Racing and Gaming near Fort Campbell and Newport Racing and Gaming and Turfway Park in Northern Kentucky. Outside of Kentucky, Churchill Downs Inc. has casinos, racetracks, retail sportsbooks and the TwinSpires online betting platform.
“CDI is committed to investing in the city of Louisville and today we are particularly excited to announce this new downtown entertainment venue,” said Bill Carstanjen, CEO of CDI. “Our HRM expansion will be a win for the entire community in the Louisville area and will create $10 to $12 million per year in additional purse money for Churchill Downs Racetrack.”
According to Churchill Downs Inc., the expansion will create 450 jobs, including 100 new permanent jobs at the venue.
Churchill pledged $1 million to the West End Opportunity Partnership, a tax-increment financing district created by the Kentucky legislature in the last session to establish a pool of money to benefit Louisville’s economically distressed West End neighborhoods.
Tax Increment Financing (TIF) is an economic development incentive used by local governments to help finance private projects by earmarking future tax gains in a particular district for that project.
The TIF guarantees that for the next 20 years, 80 percent of new tax revenue generated in those neighborhoods will be returned to the Partnership to reinvest in economic development projects and homeowner stabilization in the West End, according to the news release.
Churchill Downs Inc. was slow to implement historical racing machines, long holding out for traditional slot machines, which are illegal in Kentucky. And historical racing was under a legal cloud for more than a decade; finally in February the Kentucky General Assembly passed legislation designed to make them explicitly legal.
Since the Derby City Gaming facility opened in 2018 it has become hugely profitable for the company, which announced in July it will be investing $76 million in an expansion to add 400 more slots-like machines and a hotel to the site, plus other amenities.
Churchill, which just sold its Arlington Park property in Illinois to the Chicago Bears for almost $200 million, also has announced millions in upgrades to the main Churchill Downs property and plans to build a new casino resort in Terre Haute, Ind.
This story was originally published September 30, 2021 at 10:55 AM.
