But the ORC, an unelected commission of governor-appointed lawyers and veterinarians, was poised to greenlight Boersma’s project anyway. Only tribally owned casinos are legal in the state Oregonians voted against legalizing private casinos in 2010, and then again in 2012.

Boersma calls it an “entertainment venue,” rather than a gambling destination. This loophole could allow the proposed business - the Flying Lark - to tap into the casino market without legally being considered a casino. They don’t generate random numbers the way traditional slots do, even though they replicate the slot machine experience. But the internal math they use is based on pari-mutuel wagering, so they legally qualify as horse-racing. They weren’t particularly popular or profitable.īoersma’s HHR machines have no visual indicators to connect them to horse racing. Portland Meadows already had 150 HHRs, but they were an older version that showed animations of historic races, with names and dates redacted so gamblers couldn’t know the outcome. So he decided to use a model that’s gaining steam across the country: Tether his racetrack to a racino stocked with a brand-new generation of “historic horse-racing machines,” or HHRs - flashy, color-saturated LED terminals built by slot machine companies. When Boersma purchased Grants Pass Downs, he knew that horse racing alone wouldn’t keep it afloat. The state’s oldest track, Portland Meadows, could not sustain overhead and shuttered early in 2019. The next year, he hired Randy Evers, who served as the ORC’s director from 2007 to 2013, as the track’s president.īoersma’s stated aim was to resuscitate Oregon’s necrotic horse-racing industry.

In 2019, Boersma bought Grants Pass Downs, the horse-racing track in his southern Oregon hometown. The racino is owned by the state’s newest billionaire, Travis Boersma, who co-founded the drive-through coffee chain Dutch Bros. The ORC effectively developed the plans behind closed doors, locking out both the public and tribal leaders and threatening an essential source of funding for tribes in Oregon. By potentially permitting machines that blur the line between horse racing and slot-machine gambling, the Oregon Racing Commission has brought the project to the edge of completion. An obscure state agency in charge of horse racing is shepherding something called a “racino” through the permitting process, basically creating the state’s first private casino, 233 miles south of the Spirit Mountain Casino in Grants Pass, Oregon. Image courtesy of the Flying Lark/HBG Designīut over the past year, Mercier has witnessed what seems like a slow-motion train wreck.

Oregon casino