Ohio’s first racino opens

Gamblers celebrate at Scioto Downs in Columbus.

COLUMBUS — Beam by beam and brick by brick, Kelly Renner watched the construction at Scioto Downs, eagerly awaiting the completion of the casino located about a mile from her home.

“Every day, I noticed something different. Every day I could see the progress,” she said.

So naturally, Renner, a long-time regular at the racetrack portion of Scioto Downs, wasn’t about to miss Friday’s casino opening.

“We wanted to be one of the first ones in,” said Renner, who got in line around 10 a.m. Eventually, she had plenty of company, as about 2,000 people formed a long line that snaked around the outside of the casino.

“Ten more seconds,” shouted Michael Newsome, Scioto Downs’ director of marketing, at 2 p.m., and the excited crowd began the countdown.

When they got to zero, the doors opened and a new era of legalized gambling in central Ohio began.

Renner and her fellow gamblers poured through the two doors that will now remain open around the clock all year long, and headed to the video lottery terminals to begin pulling and pushing and praying for a jackpot.

The volume of play was so high that some of the machines shut down soon after the opening.

Scioto Downs is the state’s first racino — a combination racetrack and video lottery terminal casino — and the first casino of any sort in Columbus.

Others are open elsewhere in the state.

The Horseshoe Casino Cleveland opened May14 and Hollywood Casino Toledo on Tuesday.

Hollywood Casino Columbus is scheduled to open in October and Horseshoe Casino Cincinnati is expected to open next year.

The $152 million Scioto Downs racino has 1,791 video lottery terminals, with 300 more of the electronic slot machines on the way.

Kelly Renner’s favorite is Wheel of Fortune.

“I like the excitement when it spins,” she said.

The racino is not licensed to operate table games such as poker, blackjack and craps.

The vast majority of the cars in the parking lot of Scioto Downs sported Ohio license plates, with a sprinkling of out-of-state plates, including vehicles from as far away as Massachusetts and Maine.

“If you’ve ever been to Mountaineer or Wheeling Island (casinos) in West Virginia, you’ll see a lot of Ohio license plates,” said Danielle Frizzi-Babb, spokeswoman for the Ohio Lottery, which oversees the operation of Scioto Downs.

Now, she said, those gamblers and their money will remain in Ohio, ‘supporting our economy and education system.’

The Ohio Lottery estimates the state’s share of revenue from Scioto Downs will be about $3 million a month and will be used to fund education programs.

Rebecca Hand and her son, Ryan, and friend Dan Rucker came from Cincinnati and were first in line.