City Seeks Off-Track Betting Designation : Racing: Seeking a tourist drawing card, city asks to be included in satellite-wagering legislation. Controversy is expected.

Seeking a drawing card that will attract more tourists and revive the flagging local economy, officials have asked that the city be designated as a site for off-track wagering on horse races.

The City Council last week voted 4 to 0 to ask state Sen. Kenneth Maddy (R-Fresno) to include San Clemente in his legislation to expand the accessibility of off-track betting in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

“With travel from southern Orange County to the major tracks having become a frustrating experience due to continual gridlock, an easily accessible satellite location in San Clemente would provide a pleasant alternative,” the city’s letter to Maddy said.

The request was prompted by Councilman Thomas Lorch and R. Richard Thrasher, who runs a local business called Surfside Thoroughbred Farms. The company forms and manages race-horse partnerships, allowing individuals to pool their money and invest in thoroughbreds.

“If we don’t do it somebody else will,” Lorch said. “We don’t want to lose another draw like the Nixon Library,” he added, referring to the city’s failed attempt to obtain that tourist amenity, which ended up at Nixon’s birthplace in Yorba Linda.

Thrasher, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel, contended that San Clemente, which has toyed several years ago with the idea of off-track wagering, now has a valuable chance to proceed.

Sitting at his desk last week surrounded by memorabilia of racing successes, he pointed to a March 20 story in the Daily Racing Form in which Maddy, an avid horse racing supporter, suggested that a wagering facility in south Orange County would be “a reasonable idea” and “would take private entrepreneurship.”

Thrasher said he would like to put together a private corporation financed by San Clemente residents that would operate a high-toned facility with a “turf club atmosphere,” including a restaurant that would attract vacationers.

Thrasher said that two years ago he did an analysis that concluded a betting satellite could attract at least 325 people a day. That would generate enough income within 3 1/2 years, he said, to repay a $750,000 investment that he estimates would be required to retrofit an existing building in the city as a wagering center.

Perhaps the greatest financial benefit from the horse-wagering satellite, proponents say, would be felt by local hotels, restaurants and merchants. And the city’s coffers would receive a bonanza from increased bed-tax revenue.

But Joe Harper, president and general manager of Del Mar Racetrack in San Diego County, warned that off-track betting centers might not attract the kind of people San Clemente imagines.

“The satellite does not bring tourists; it brings mostly locals,” he said. “The satellite patron as a whole is the hard-core gambler,” he said. “The one who wants to go and watch a TV set, even if it is in a nice room, is just there to bet on horses. He is not there to enjoy the pageantry of the sport.”

City officials acknowledge that they aren’t certain of the costs and financial benefits of a center. Also, they say they are undecided whether Thrasher’s proposed investment group or some other organization would be the best choice to operate it. Ultimately, they say, the city might reject the idea entirely.

But city officials say for now they are intrigued by the possibilities. A betting center, they say, might complement the city’s efforts to redevelop its north beach area as a tourist destination.

“It might be a shot in the arm for us,” said City Manager Michael W. Parness.

Don Kindred, president of the San Clemente Chamber of Commerce, said although the chamber has not as yet taken a position, he supports the concept of a betting parlor like Thrasher has described.

“I can see it bringing some money into the city,” he said.

However, Kindred conceded that any proposal to expand gambling in the city will be controversial.

Karoline Koester, a former City Council member and community activist, said: “I don’t think it needs to be pushed in all of the peoples’ faces in the city. I think it could be a bad influence on our young people, and I wish it could be put to a (citywide) vote.”

With such issues still unresolved, city officials say they have decided nonetheless to press for an amendment in Maddy’s bills to retain their options.

Only licensed state fairs and race tracks are allowed by law to have satellite wagering.

Maddy, who was on vacation during the Senate recess, could not be reached for comment on San Clemente’s proposal.

Patrick Currin, Maddy’s legislative aide, said the bill that San Clemente wants to amend, SB 944, currently would enable Hollywood Park and Santa Anita race tracks in Los Angeles County to simulcast each other’s races. It would also expand the number of race tracks that the Pomona Fairplex is able to broadcast for off-track betting.

Currin said a provision that would have allowed satellite wagering at the Orange County Fairgrounds was recently deleted from the bill, primarily in response to pressure from the city of Costa Mesa. The city protested that the gambling facility’s proposed location in a residential area was inappropriate and that it would worsen traffic and parking problems.

The only off-track betting center in Orange County is at the Los Alamitos Racecourse, which under Maddy’s bill would be able to broadcast races year-round and show races at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park.

Currin said that while he was unfamiliar with the details of San Clemente’s proposal, he did foresee at least one potential problem. A companion bill authored by Maddy, SB 945, to encourage for-profit development of higher-class betting centers, allows only existing racing associations to open them. Thrasher’s proposal would not be allowed under that bill, he said.

Also, strong opposition to an off-track wagering satellite in San Clemente might be expected from race tracks.

“I think we would not look kindly on that,” Harper said. He insisted that the Los Angeles-Orange County market for horse race betting is “saturated” and any new wagering facility would rob from another.

Harper said racetracks prefer revenue from live races rather than from satellite betting because they are entitled to 6% of the bets made at the track, compared to 3.5% of the money wagered on their races via broadcasts.

“What we lose from off-track wagering also is the fellow who buys our program, pays for parking and admission and buys food at the concessions,” he added.

Del Mar’s own off-track wagering operation, housed in a new $11-million park that opens Sept. 12, is the busiest in Southern California when the track is closed, attracting an average daily attendance of 2,622 people.