By T. D. Thornton
Timelines for the massive-scaled, $455-million rebuild of Belmont Park were brought more clearly into focus Wednesday during a construction update presented by the New York Racing Association (NYRA) at a meeting of the New York State Franchise Oversight Board (FOB).
In chronological order:
1) Belmont's new one-mile Tapeta track could open for training as early as the spring of 2025.
2) NYRA is keeping open the option of running the 2026 GI Belmont Stakes back downstate at the new facility under a festival-meet scenario in which all four racing surfaces will be ready, but the grandstand and clubhouse might not be fully finished.
3) The “temporary occupancy approval” target date for completion of all Belmont Park construction is Sept. 11, 2026. This would dovetail with the conclusion of that year's Saratoga Race Course season, making fall 2026 the first full race meet at the new facility.
4) The possibility exists that Belmont Park could host the Breeders' Cup as early as 2026, although it's more likely that both NYRA and the Breeders' Cup will end up waiting another year before making that commitment.
Even though the 2026 Belmont Stakes and Breeders' Cup possibilities might seem to be the headline-grabbers out of the Oct. 9 FOB meeting, the wait-and-see, flex-plan options for both major racing events are consistent with what NYRA has been projecting since even before the state first okayed the loan for the Belmont Park rebuild in 2023.
“We will be in a position with the racetracks where we would look at the possibility of a modified Belmont Stakes in '26, and we would like to just keep that option open,” Glen Kozak, NYRA's senior vice president of operations and capital projects, said during Wednesday's meeting.
For 2024 and 2025, NYRA moved the Belmont Stakes to Saratoga to accommodate the downstate construction. Although the third leg of the Triple Crown has been temporarily truncated to 1 1/4 miles from 1 1/2 miles because NYRA didn't want to start the Belmont Stakes on Saratoga's far turn, this year's four-day festival there was considered a success from both aesthetic and business standpoints.
“It certainly wouldn't be a full-building use” if NYRA decided to run the Belmont Stakes back at its traditional home in 2026, Kozak said.
“But again, we will update [the FOB] as that develops to see if there is that ability to host it in a manner that's appropriate in 2026,” Kozak said.
NYRA executives didn't directly raise the possibility of hosting the 2026 Breeders' Cup during Wednesday's meeting, but FOB member Rob Williams did bring up that possibility on several occasions.
Asked after the meeting to clarify NYRA's intentions about hosting the championships in two years, Patrick McKenna, NYRA's vice president of communications, wrote in an email that, “Although a venue for the 2026 Breeders' Cup World Championships has yet to be determined, the new Belmont Park will be complete and ready to host the 2026 Breeders' Cup should the opportunity arise. The Breeders' Cup has previously announced its commitment to add Belmont to the rotation of host venues following NYRA's modernization of the facility.”
What went unspoken at the meeting is how much of a risk it would be for both NYRA and the Breeders' Cup to commit to Belmont Park for 2026 while the new facility isn't even fully constructed.
Even if everything goes as scheduled, hosting the championships only about seven weeks after the new Belmont's grand opening in 2026 leaves little room for error, operations-wise. Why rush to host the Breeders' Cup there in 2026 when 2027 seems a more realistic goal and the new Belmont will likely be part of the championship rotation for decades to come?
The governor-appointed FOB represents the interests of New York State in the real estate at Aqueduct Racetrack, Belmont and Saratoga. Although much of Wednesday's meeting focused on high-level budgeting and contracting, Kozak gave a succinct update on Belmont's four racing surfaces, which will include the main track, two turf courses, and, for the first time in New York, a Tapeta track.
“The tracks are progressing very well,” Kozak said. “We're on schedule with the tracks. There will be training on the synthetic early [compared to when the rest of the facility will be ready].
“We have not given a timeline on the main track, just because of working with the project team, not to impact any issues with the [grandstand and clubhouse] superstructure going up,” Kozak said. “We'll update [the FOB] as that develops to see if there is the capability of giving even modified training hours, if required, by next spring.”
Kozak said all underground tunnels to the infield are complete–one from the grandstand; pedestrian and commercial tunnels from north parking lot, and the horse tunnels that will connect both the barn area and frontside paddock to the infield.
“We're currently working on the drainage of the surfaces themselves,” Kozak said. “We have almost seven miles of pipe to put in on the one turf course, nine miles on the other, as well as all new surfaces from the bottom up, meaning new sub-base, new drainage stone, sand, and then our growing medium.
“The rails are installed on the synthetic track,” Kozak continued. “The inner safety rail, all the posts are up for the inside and the outside rail. We're expecting to start to install porous asphalt, either the end of next week or the beginning of the following week, for the interior 40 feet of the synthetic surface to be able to stockpile the Tapeta racing surface on that, with an anticipated completion date of early- to mid-Q2 of next year, so that way we have the ability to allow horses to start training on a one-mile synthetic track.
“The two turf courses, we're in a blending process right now of the growing medium, and our anticipation is sometime around mid-November to start putting the growing medium down,” Kozak said. “And directly behind the growing medium, we will start to install sod. The sod has been secured for almost a year now, so we've had that grown on Long Island, so it'll be a natural transition into the same climate.
“Depending on how the weather responds this winter, we'll continue with that [sod] work right through the wintertime with an approximate 10 tractor-trailer loads a day,” Kozak said. “We'd be basically able to install a sixteenth of a mile of racing surface per day.
“The main track, currently the installer from Kentucky [is working] just with an oversight capacity for the install of the safety rail on the main track as well as the outside rail on the outer turf course, with an anticipated completion of what we can do, because of material locations, of two weeks on that,” Kozak said.
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