When racing finally returns to Nassau County’s Belmont Park next year, it will be run over a refurbished racetrack and in front of a sparkling new grandstand that the New York Racing Association hopes will bring a track that was built in 1905 and received its last significant renovation in 1968 into the twenty-first century.

It remains unclear whether they will run the Belmont Stakes, the third jewel in thoroughbred racing’s Triple Crown, in front of a partially finished building or at Saratoga Racecourse like in 2024 and 2025.

Bright white and glass-enclosed with a sweeping canopy, the new building will be light and airy compared to its hulking predecessor, which rose 100 feet above the track and was as long as the Empire State Building turned on its side.

Built for a different era when attendance at New York tracks was at its peak, the old Belmont’s 30,000 stadium seats still rocked to the thumping of a 40,000+ crowd on Belmont Stakes day through its closing in 2023. For much of the rest of the year, those seats and the numerous betting windows tucked into the building’s interior extremes went unused.

NYRA President David O’Rourke said the smaller building will prioritize amenities and comfort, providing more flexible space in the backyard and infield to allow NYRA to scale up for big days.

“It’s really putting the park back in Belmont Park, and the new building, the footprint will be much smaller but the amenities will be better, it will be all glass, and it’s really a beautiful building and it will be an asset for Nassau County,” said O’Rourke.

The project will also merge NYRA’s downstate racing at the facility, which will be in use year-round aside from the annual rite at Saratoga each summer.

“There were two racetracks eight miles apart, they were both built in the ‘60s and they were built for a different fan experience, they were really gambling emporiums in a sense,” said O’Rourke.

Of the three NYRA tracks, drawing the short straw is Aqueduct Racetrack in South Ozone Park, Queens, which will close when the new Belmont is finished.

The ‘city track,’ as O’Rourke put it, is a historic, mid-century throwback that has for decades hosted New York’s winter racing.

Rebuilt in 1959, it was, at the time, the most modern racetrack in the world and had over the years hosted a who’s who of racing Hall of Famers, including Secretariat.

In its heyday, it boasted a massive grandstand and its own surrounding green space, which developers transformed into Resorts World Casino in 2011 following years of declining track attendance.

With racing operations now confined to the aging clubhouse, its space-age geometric accents still visible from the A-train, O’Rourke said New York Racing has plenty of vintage at Saratoga: now it’s time for something new.

“We’re standing here in a facility that’s over 150 years old, so we’ll have tradition, and then modern and future,” he said.

But at what cost? NYRA is financing the rebuild of Belmont’s racing surfaces, but the state is loaning $455 million to build the new spectator facilities, with strong backing from Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Sen. Joe Addabbo, who chairs the racing and wagering committee, says it’s the right move, noting the state’s support of other sports facilities.

“Thousands of union jobs, not only a short-term benefit, but certainly a long-term benefit, the economic impact of these big construction projects,” he said, referencing the state’s assistance in facilities for the Yankees, Mets, and Bills in recent years.

In addition to that loan, racing relies on other state money to keep the wheels turning. Multiple lawmakers, including Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal and Senator Robert Jackson, with backing from Senators Liz Krueger and Brad Hoylman-Sigal, are pushing legislation to turn off the tap.

The group Horseracing Wrongs, which argues that, beyond its significant concerns over racing safety and equine racing and training deaths, the state should allow racing to stand on its own feet and let economics run its course, has pushed for that legislation. They also charge that the state is assisting the very same organization that will be paying back the loan.

“It’s not within [the] government’s purview unless you’re talking about major industries like finance, who decide the winners and the losers in our economy. When one door closes, another one opens that’s the free market,” said founder Patrick Battuello.

But Addabbo argues racing provides a return on the state’s investment.

“Over the years, no matter what kind of economic situation the state is in, they always reinvested in racing because the return on their investment is so much greater. The 19,000 jobs, the millions in revenue,” he said, though Battuello insists many of the positions are low-paying, and some of them could exist without racing.

As for this project specifically, O’Rourke noted that the state owns the property underneath all three racetracks, and said Belmont’s racing facilities are only part of the economic picture when you consider the benefits of consolidating at a site that now also houses the UBS arena.

“Dividating back about 110 acres at Aqueduct, moving it to Belmont where there has been investment from the Islanders, the mall, creating an economic hub in Nassau County and Elmont,” he said.

When it comes to safety, O’Rourke said racing has ‘never been safer,’ and Addabbo insisted that safety is a top priority for state lawmakers as they work with NYRA.

Last month, Hochul announced that the Breeders Cup, racing’s fall championship, will come back to Belmont in 2027 for the first time in 20 years.

While Aqueduct is winterized and hosted in its pre-casino form in 1985, O’Rourke cited Belmont’s north-facing grandstand and lack of climate-controlled facilities as a drag on NYRA’s efforts to lure the event back to Belmont after hosting multiple times in the 1990s and early 2000s.