Oaklawn Park continues its impressive shine

HOT SPRINGS — About the time the car was put in park the rain stopped.

It had rained heavily at times.

Construction resumed the moment it stopped.

Oaklawn Park is undergoing a $100 million addition. Expanding the casino and adding the hotel are in full swing.

That wasn’t the purpose of the visit, but it was mesmerizing.

Oaklawn is going to be a first-class oasis of entertainment by 2021.

First, the reason was a simple meeting with Louis Cella, chairman of the board of Oaklawn, Eric Jackson, senior vice president, with Greg Flesher, president of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame, and yours truly.

One day during the Oaklawn meet schedule is Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame day.

Inductees from all over the country are invited to celebrate racing and present the trophies for each race.

Flesher wanted to know what he could do to make the event better.

Cella wanted the same thing.

The meeting went well, but the wave of new facilities was hard to ignore.

After lunch, everyone went to the top of the grandstand where the press and racing stewards work and looked at the flow of the new additions. It is impressive.

As were the number of workers who seemed to never stop.

There is a bit of urgency because in a few weeks horses will start to arrive, and once they are on the grounds the sound of jackhammers isn’t going to work.

The frame of the casino is nearly finished, so doing inside work there won’t be a problem.

The hotel frame is about one-third finished, meaning that without any weather delays, the 10-story structure could be in the dry in about seven more weeks.

Then comes all the detail work.

All the contractors and workers are from Arkansas.

Cella’s home may be in St. Louis, but half of his heart is here.

His wife is from England — not the one across the big pond — and he attended law school at the University of Arkansas where his son, Charles, is a second-year law student.

From the top of the facility, the 10 new barns can be seen, and Cella points out where there will be more.

He also showed where the new track kitchen is, and where the convention center will be, as well as the new restaurant and bar that adjoins the hotel and casino.

Then he explains why the dirt on the track is an odd color.

Oaklawn is the only track in the country that resurfaces its race track every year. The concern is the dirt gets old because of the constant pounding it takes from 1,200-pound horses.

It is that type of attention to detail, and growing purses from money the casino makes, that has turned this track into a jewel of the racing industry.

Little known fact: Zenyatta, the greatest female horse in racing history, and American Pharoah, the greatest male horse since the 1970’s, won races at only three tracks. Oaklawn, Santa Anita and Churchill Downs. Both won two races at Oaklawn.

Travel down one floor into the grandstand, and there is unbudgeted work going on.

One of the things Cella noticed last year, the first that Oaklawn raced into May, was the warmth in the grandstand, and he decided to air condition the entire facility for the fans.

Hundreds of air ducts hang from new framing up high. It is an expensive addition, but something the racing fans will appreciate.

At 1:30 Cella had to leave for a meeting with Tim the construction manager who is waiting patiently for him.

It started about the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame but became an experience of expansion and growth that will reap rewards for this city, Garland County and the state of Arkansas.