Sports fans may know the Rooney family as founders of the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers. But their connection to harness racing is just as strong. Today, Tim Rooney still runs Yonkers Raceway. And he is optimistic about the future. By Debbie Little
THE ROONEYS: TIM, PAT, ART SR., JOHN & ART JR.
Tim Rooney, President of New York’s Yonkers Raceway, has been called a traditionalist, but don’t think that means he’s stuck in the past.
Groundbreaking regular simulcasting to France and the return of the $1 million International Trot are just two of the things that has Yonkers looking at a bright and profitable future.
It began back in 1972 when Rooney heard from a friend that Yonkers Raceway was up for sale, and his family bought the track.
“At that time Yonkers was one of the major racetracks in the world regardless of whether it be thoroughbred or harness racing. It was a major, major place. We averaged 20,000 people a day. We were bigger than the New York Yankees or the Mets or the Giants or the Jets in total attendance in those days,” Rooney said.
“The reason to buy it was that it was the biggest and the best that there was at that time,” he added.
This was not the family’s first venture into the racetrack business. At one time they owned Liberty Bell Park in Pennsylvania and the Green Mountain Kennel Club in Vermont. They currently own the Palm Beach Kennel Club in Florida, and Shamrock Farms, a breeding farm in Maryland.
“I don’t know if we’re the oldest continuously owned by one family place in Maryland or the second oldest. And Maryland historically is a very old state in the breeding of horses. We’ve had our place since 1948, so we’ve been in this business a tremendous amount of time,” Rooney said.
“Years ago, some fellow that was buying all the racetracks around, tried to buy our dog track in Florida and he was interested in making a deal on [Yonkers] and I was telling him that we weren’t interested. He wasn’t persistent but a fellow that was a friend of mine that worked for him was, and finally I said to him, ‘you know we’ve been in this business a heck of a lot longer than the guy you’re representing has been in it’. I told him that we didn’t have the tracks now as we once had, but at one time I think we did have four or five racetracks, and this is something we’ve been involved with for fifty-something years, so it’s something that we like to do, and we’re going to continue to do it if we can,” he added.
A descendent of Irish Catholic emigrants, Rooney grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s north side.
Rooney was the third of five children, all boys, of Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney.
Rooney remembers growing up making yearly family trips to Quebec’s shrine of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre, but he said on one particular trip he joked with his father about the other ‘holy places’ they visited on their way, back and forth to Canada.
“I reminded him that we started off at the shrine of Our Lady of Charles Town, then we went on to the shrine of Laurel Raceway, and then we came up to the shrine of Aqueduct and we went up to the shrine of Blue Bonnets,” he said.
It was on one of those trips home from Quebec that Rooney got his first glimpse of Yonkers Raceway, although he didn’t know at the time it was a racetrack.
“For years, every time we were driving south from upstate you’d see the cantilever roof and for some reason I thought we were already in downtown New York at the 97th St. pier. Then I was shocked when we’d go by the place and it was Yonkers Raceway,” Rooney said.
In 1968, Rooney actually made it inside the track for the first time as he accompanied his father and watched Nevele Pride win the Yonkers Trot for Stanley Dancer.
After buying the track, the Rooneys were faced with some tough and unexpected competition from New York City Off--Track Betting and the Meadowlands.
“It’s hard to get people to come to a racetrack when someone down the street is giving it away for free,” Rooney said about OTB.
“It was [also] really a difficult thing when the Meadowlands opened up,” he added.
Rooney knew they had an uphill battle on their hands with the brand new, bright and shiny Meadowlands.
“No matter what we did with [our building], no matter putting new tile down, painting it, putting new chairs in, no matter what you could do when it got down to it, having a stadium-type building that was built in 1899, there wasn’t a heck of a lot you could do to make it look like it was built in 1970,” Rooney said.
Some also viewed the half-mile track as a disadvantage.
“Years ago the breeders in New York came to me and told me that if we changed the size of the track to a 5/8ths-mile that we would be the biggest track in America. We would surpass the Meadowlands at that time in how popular we were. I said, ‘would you people be able to guarantee us that you would build the track and we would pay you back by the increase in business that we did from the 5/8ths-mile track?’ That was the last I ever heard of that,” he said.
Track size and competition with the Meadowlands would be long forgotten when two planes flew into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, changing the world as we knew it and the future of Yonkers Raceway.
In 1995, Delaware’s Dover Downs debuted 500 Video Lottery Terminals (VLTs) prompting other states to want to get in on the profitable action. But it did not seem that the legislation for VLTs was getting any traction in New York State until 9/11.
In the days following the attacks, the state of New York was in a panic not knowing if there would be more attacks or how much the tragedy would impact the state’s economy.
With so much of the state’s revenue coming from New York City, there was great concern over how to fill future gaping holes in the budget. VLTs were viewed as a way to generate money for education as well as create jobs and revitalize the horse racing industry in the state.
The unforgettable tragedy led New York lawmakers to pass legislation allowing for VLTs at racetracks, including Yonkers, which debuted at Empire City at Yonkers Raceway, a renovated gaming facility in October of 2006.
“Since getting the slots here, we’re equal to any facility I see. We’re not as big a facility as other people have, but with the other big facilities, at least in America, the only time they need them is at Churchill Downs for the Derby or the Preakness at Pimlico. And sad to say the only time Belmont needs it is on Belmont Stakes Day, nobody goes to those places in those numbers. Now Saratoga is an exception, and maybe Del Mar, but racing for some reason doesn’t have the pizzazz that it once had, but in Europe it does,” Rooney said.
Rooney made plenty of trips to Europe after Yonkers took over the International Trot when Roosevelt when out of business in 1988.
“Every year I went to Paris for [the Prix d’Amerique]. What we would do is invite the winner to come to our race,” he said.
The last International was contested at Yonkers in 1995, but Rooney had been thinking about bringing it back for several years and the trip to France last year helped solidify that decision.
Rooney went to France in January to sign contracts regarding simulcasting that would start later in 2014, and despite his previous visits he didn’t think his presence would have much of an impact, since he had not traveled there for quite a while.
Joe Faraldo, President of the Standardbred Owners Association of New York, was part of the U.S. delegation that Rooney traveled with, and believes Rooney’s presence had a great impact. Even when it came to the group’s accommodations.
A couple of days after Rooney said he was going to be part of the trip, Faraldo remembers getting a call from SOA Executive Director Alex Dadoyan, saying that there was a problem with the hotel they had booked.
“I tell everybody when we were first going, that we were going to a Motel 6. When we told them Rooney was coming, there was a problem with the hotel. I couldn’t figure it out until I got to the [new] hotel and it was really a top-notch place,” Faraldo said.
Faraldo remembers that the last night of the trip they had dinner in Normandy. All the French bigshots took the train to Normandy and one of the topics they kept bombarding Rooney with was the International Trot because they wanted the race back.
“It’s been my plan since we got into the casino business, with the revenue [the slots] provide, that we could once again resurrect the International by giving the purse money you need to attract something like this, and what we’re hoping to do is to use this as the breakthrough so we can expand our business even further in Europe,” Rooney said.
“I think it’s already working to some degree because there are a number of other countries that are going to be taking the International, and I think if that works out, I think down the road, if some regulations could be changed on co-mingling bets, our business will be able to expand dramatically over there. And the more we expand internationally, the stronger we will get over here,” he added.
Bringing back the International may be a great moment for Yonkers, but there has been some chatter on social media that criticizes the decision to have the race on the same day as the Kentucky Futurity.
Faraldo says the plan was to race the International on Sunday, October 11, to avoid any conflict with the Futurity but it couldn’t be done.
According to Faraldo, a French representative said: “If you go on Saturday [October 10] we’ll take four races. If you want to go on Sunday, we maybe can squeeze in a little video of your race.”
With Sweden agreeing to take the International, the hope is that once simulcasting to France resumes in November, maybe Sweden could come onboard as well.
“Is this groundbreaking? Just having our races go over [to France], yeah, because it’s opening up dialogue, and it’s going to open up more markets. Evidence the Swedes,” Faraldo said.
There is no question that Rooney is committed to making Yonkers a global brand as well as a bigger player here at home.
“I remember when we first bought this place and I didn’t go to my mother and father’s 50th Wedding Anniversary because it was the night of the Yonkers Trot or the Cane Pace.I didn’t think I could take off for that, which was probably very silly. But you have to support something and you have to be there if there are problems, and having a Rooney here or a Galterio [Rooney’s son-in-law], is very important. It’s very important for people to know that you’re involved as part of management and part of ownership,” Rooney said.
As president of the SOA for over 30 years, Faraldo has had many business dealings with Yonkers and says that dealing with Rooney is very different from the times when he’s represented the horsemen at Monticello, Saratoga or Vernon.
“I don’t need everything in writing with Tim and most of the time I don’t need anything in writing with Tim. If Tim says we have an extension of the contract and these are the terms, I don’t have to worry about anything,” Faraldo said.
To illustrate this trust, Faraldo says that one year he discovered a mistake that Yonkers accounting had made, shortchanging the horsemen a bunch of money, and he pointed out the mistake to Tim.
“And he said ‘If I owe you $2.5 million you’ll get the $2.5 million.’ And that was it,” Faraldo said.
Not long after, Faraldo ran into Rooney, who informed him there would be something extra in the purse account.
“Then he said to me ‘our lawyer said he didn’t think we had to pay it to you. He thought we could beat you out of the money, and I told the lawyer if the money is owed to the horsemen you pay it to the horsemen.’ So that guy’s word is good and I think he learned all of that from his father,” Faraldo said.
