PAHRUMP, NEVADA GETS A NEW PARI-MUTUAL HARNESS RACING FACILITY

AND THE CROWD GOES WILD!

Greetings sports fans of all flavors, and children of all ages. Welcome back my friends to the column that never ends, Vegas Valley Sports Beat. That daring little darling of Ethical Internet Sports Journalism you either love to hate or hate to love. Either way, there is no denying it. You can’t put it down. Okay, so maybe you can put it down if you put your mind to it, but hopefully, we’ll be able to grab your attention and hold onto it for a few minutes more.

Just long enough for me to tell you the wonderful news, and for you to get all excited about it. And awayyyyyy we go.

Yes, my dear friends, you did read the headlines right. Yes, Pahrump, Nevada that shining little ghost town that refuses to give up the ghost and dissolve quietly into the desert sands like every other boomtown that came before it, is going to be building a harness racing facility right here in the very unlikely town of Pahrump. My jaw is still on the floor where it fell when I read the news myself.

Just to get a harness racing track would be awesome, but this is reportedly going to be a mega-project that may include a waterpark, stables, theater, and of course the centerpiece a new resort casino. As if that isn’t reason enough to say holy cow, it is going to be built very close to home for me.

This project, be it a mega-project or not is going to mean a great deal to the people that live n the area as it brings in new construction jobs and revenues, and then once it opens to the public the facility will provide many more people with gainful employment in the form of management, general staffing, and supporting role type jobs.

That is incredible news to me, as I’m sure it must be incredible news to many other people in Pahrump and Nye County. This is indeed a most welcome shot in the arm for our local economy. I personally love harness racing and having a water park as well as a new casino to give the local monopoly a run for their money is like pennies from Heaven only better.

The resort casino would be 40,000 square feet and it will be focused around the racetrack which will cover 7/8ths of a mile and stables that will hold as many as 280 racehorses at a time. The planners speculate that there would eventually be restaurants, shops, batting cages, a theater, a waterpark, and a campground that will have room for up to 2,500 vehicles and as many as 200 RVs at a time.

Tim Bohannon, the president of the Nevada Standardbred Association Inc., was the one that pitched the project to Nye County Commissioners last week. “It’s forward-looking and may be subject to change.” He told the Pahrump Valley Times. The Nevada Standardbred Association was founded several years ago by a group of locals who have an interest in bringing the thrill of harness racing to Nevada and base it here in Pahrump.

Nevada offers nearly every type of legal gambling you can name, but horse racing is scarcely found in the state, and there are no major facilities such as the one proposed by Tim Bohannon’s group. As of now, there is no set price tag for the project, but Bohannon says the Western Saddlebred Association is going to raise a large portion of that funding on their own initiative as Nye county commissioners reacted favorably to the initial pitch and it was eagerly cosigned by Commissioner Leo Blundo, and Bruce Jabbour, while Commissioner Debra Strickland told developers last week that she was sure they will… “find support from within our commissioners.”

“This is very exciting, I’m in favor of it. Commissioner Jabbour reportedly told reporters.

The proposed racing season will run from the end of October through the end of May if it gets conditional approval from the Nevada Racing Commission. There would be two race days every week and each day will feature 12 live harness races throughout the season, and the races could be simulcast across the globe from Pahrump, Nevada. This would effectively bring neighbors closer to us all from all over the world and I can only see this as a very good thing for all of Nye County and Nevada as a whole. I would love to work at this track with the horses or in maintenance perhaps, but if I do nothing else I hope to infect some of you with enthusiasm and moral support for this project.

I have no stake in this whatsoever, my interest is for the sake of the people of Nye County, Nevada, and the USA in that order and equally even if it might mean more flies during the Summer months. It’s not like all the raw trash piled up in the town dump causes any fewer flies. Given also that BLM can round up 1000 wild horses from our backyard every 2-3 years tells me that any argument spoken in that vein would be a load of road apples. The difference between how much manure a wild horse excretes compared to a racehorse is like comparing light to dark. Wild horses drop some huge piles.

To that end, the developers are forward-thinking in their approach to the issues of water conservation, reclamation, and flies. A high-tech reclamation process will be designed for that purpose. Meanwhile, a manure processing facility will help deter a lot of the flies. They say that it will tend to make the project more sustainable for the future.

There’s no question that raw fertilizer is going to come in handy in the coming days, but this is the perfect time for a project like this for Pahrump and I hope the Commissioners will agree as one. Our economy is based upon the confidence of the American consumer and confidence remains high in spite of the destructive economic disaster called the DNC.

But I digress. Feel free to prove me wrong anyway. Meanwhile, back to business.

The new multi-use facility would also have an education and training center that could be utilized for activities held by the FFA (Future Farmers of America) 4H groups, and it could play host to other community-driven events such as weddings, graduations, and the like. Just as Jeff Zidek, a consultant associated with the project said, “There is a major opportunity here. The western part of the country has very few tracks.” Indeed so. It’s about the community.” he added

No doubt about that in my mind. The project’s plans call for no fewer than 96 dormitories to be built on-site to house the workers. The developers say the Pahrump Valley Equine Performance Center of Excellence is going to draw thousands of visitors to Pahrump’s new hotels, restaurants nightlife, and shopping choices and Nye County can expect to see some fresh new revenue from the $39,000,000,000 industry that employs approximately 1,.4 million people in countless full-time jobs.

The main concerns of everyone involved in this historic project are many, but the group has taken a lot of comprehensive, and innovative new approaches to those concerns, and by George, I think they’ve got it!

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