ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, September 24, 1996 TAG: 9609240019
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE
SOURCE: Associated Press
THE HANDLE, or total money wagered by customers, comes to $22 million in the first six months.
It's early on a midweek afternoon and a steady rain is falling, but that doesn't keep customers away from the only place in Virginia where gamblers can bet on horse races.
It's not a track, but a converted supermarket off a busy highway marked by the green-and-white signature colors of Colonial Downs and a large satellite dish outside.
Inside, tables fill up well before 12:45 p.m., when daily racing from tracks around the country shows up on television screens lining three walls. There's little conversation as customers stare at their racing sheets or the TV screens.
Rose Willet is there four times a week. Her father started taking her to the tracks in New Jersey when she was 8. Before the Chesapeake parlor opened in February, she satisfied her betting urges with bingo.
``Talk about boring,'' she said. ``About 90 percent of the people in here are from bingo.''
Most of the weekday customers are regulars, she said, and everybody knows one another. ``It's fun,'' she said. ``It's a lot better than soaps.''
About 560 people visit the betting parlor each day, down substantially from the nearly 1,000 who stopped by daily in February. This summer, the average daily attendance dipped to about 420.
Colonial Downs officials say the off-track parlor has been successful because the average amount each customer bets has been nearly $200, about double what they expected. The handle - the total money wagered - has been about $22 million so far. With business expected to pick up this fall, Colonial Downs hopes to meet its goal of a $47 million handle for the year.
Through August, the Chesapeake parlor put more than $635,000 into state and local tax coffers and raised more than $500,000 to pay purses at the track Colonial Downs plans to open a track in New Kent County next summer.
``The secret to successful racing in Virginia, just as it does in any other state, is going to rest on simulcasting. It's just the state of the industry today,'' said Colonial Downs spokesman Mike Mulvihill.
Colonial Downs is allowed to have six off-track betting parlors and hopes to have three or four operating by the time the track opens. But the company has had trouble finding sites.
A second OTB parlor is to open on the Richmond-Henrico County border by late November.
A proposed parlor in Hampton fell through. No site has opened in populous Northern Virginia because satellite wagering was rejected in Fairfax, Falls Church, Arlington and Alexandria.
Satellite wagering has been approved in Brunswick and Greensville counties in rural Southside and in Virginia Beach, Portsmouth and Hampton.
The Chesapeake parlor has been ``basically operating without any incidents that have caused the commission any nightmares,'' said Donald Price, the state Racing Commission's executive secretary.
That doesn't satisfy state Sen. Mark Earley of Chesapeake, who said last month that he would introduce a bill to ban pari-mutuel betting in Virginia.
Earley, a Republican running for attorney general next year, said track officials want to introduce casino gambling into the state, a charge that Colonial Downs officials vigorously deny.
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Bettors watch TV screens showing daily racing fromby CNBtracks around the country. Each customer bets almost $200. KEYWORDS: HORSE RACING