Schmitt, VanValkenburg upset by lack of response from Churchill Downs about proposed Henrico gambling facility

One month after all eight members of Henrico’s Virginia General Assembly delegation sent a letter to Churchill Downs, Inc. CEO William Carstanjen, urging the company to withdraw plans for a gambling facility in the county, there’s been no response.

The July 16 letter, issued by Henrico’s three state senators and five delegates, outlined the delegation’s opposition to the manner in which Churchill Downs submitted plans for the proposed Rosie’s Gaming Emporium site in the Staples Mill Shopping Center at Staples Mill Road and Glenside Drive. The officials asked the company to withdraw those plans – which it submitted June 18, well after the county had initiated a process to enact an ordinance requiring a provisional use permit for any such facility – and resubmit them under that ordinance, which the Henrico Board of Supervisors adopted June 25.

“I am extremely disappointed in Colonial Downs Group and Rosie’s Gaming Emporium for their lack of response, and seeming indifference, to our concerns,” state Senator Schuyler VanValkenburg said in a statement Friday. “It is deeply problematic when you have every local and state elected official in Henrico asking a company to submit itself to public input, transparency, and to engage in a fair process and they refuse to respond. It suggests they do not care about this community and that they are not being good faith partners. Our constituents in Henrico deserve answers and deserve better.”

Colonial Downs communications representative Dave Zenner told the Citizen Friday that he was not a spokesperson for the company and that all comments about the Henrico proposal would have to come from Churchill Downs’ corporate headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky. Churchill Downs, Inc. owns Colonial Downs and Rosie’s.

Churchill Downs, Inc. Vice President of Corporate Communications Tonya Abeln was not immediately available for comment by phone or email Friday morning.

Because Churchill Downs submitted plans for the facility before the new ordinance took effect, and because the site’s zoning (B-2 business district) at that time allowed the uses it is proposing there by right, there’s nothing Henrico or state officials can do to stop the facility from opening. But Schmitt, VanValkenburg and others have been outspoken in their frustration, saying that the “end-around” method and timing by which Churchill Downs proposed the plans violated the spirit of the forthcoming ordinance.

Speaking later Friday morning with the Citizen, VanValkenburg said that the lack of a response from Churchill Downs was surprising.

“Hope springs eternal,” he said. “I thought they were going to [respond] but it’s been a month and that certainly feels like an adequate amount of time to make a decision and formulate a response. I fully expect they’ll go ahead with the project but I’ll be disappointed if they do. . . I think that there’s a lot of people who don’t want them here.”

In a statement, Brookland District Supervisor Dan Schmitt expressed similar sentiments.

“While the silence from the applicant is disappointing, it even more-so validates and shines a bright light upon their clear lack of regard for the community they supposedly intend to serve,” he said. “Henrico County residents and visitors are blessed with so many local businesses who place a premium on being true community partners that these types of intentional efforts to circumvent the public process are unmistakably clear and unacceptable to them.”

Officials from Churchill Downs have not provided details about a proposed timeline for the facility nor exact details about what it could include. Under the law in place at the time they submitted their plans for the site, they could locate as many as 175 historical horse-racing machines there.

VanValkenburg would prefer not to have a gambling facility in the county at all, he said, and particularly not in the location identified for the proposed Rosie’s site, which he believes is ripe for other forms of redevelopment that would be a better community fit.

He hinted that if the group moves forward with its plans to open the facility in Henrico, he could consider the introduction of new legislation in the General Assembly that might impact such facilities.