The Kentucky Derby may be over, but the excitement surrounding horse racing and gaming in the commonwealth is not. 

Wednesday morning, The Mint Gaming Hall at Kentucky Downs held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new facility, The Mint Event Center.

The event center, adjacent to a hotel currently under construction, will be used for a variety of purposes. Kentucky Downs marketing director John Wholihan said it will serve gaming customers, the business community and the broader Franklin-Simpson community.

The Mint Event Center will be available for hosting gaming events, musical performances, private parties, business meetings, weddings, family events and other public events, Wholihan said. 

The Mint Gaming Hall already brings in about 3,500 people a day from outside Simpson County, said Magistrate Marty Chandler. It it home to over a thousand gaming machines. 

With Wednesday’s ribbon-cutting and a forthcoming hotel, Wholihan expects the facility to soon bring in even more people, and consequently, economic impact. 

“That combination of the hotel, which is about two months away, coming with the event center, then you start getting into county hotel taxes — a very powerful thing, as other counties have seen around the country,” he said. 

If it weren’t for Kentucky Senate Majority Leader Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, the Mint Event Center may have never come to fruition. 

In 2020, a Kentucky Supreme Court ruling put Kentucky’s historical horse racing games in jeopardy. The court’s ruling against a slot machine company said that its gaming machines were not legal in the state, as they did not meet the definition of pari-mutuel wagering. 

It was unclear at the time whether historical horse racing machines, slot-like machines based on the results of past horse races, would be included in the ban. Many state legislators were concerned, due to the size of Kentucky’s horse industry. 

“The horse industry in Kentucky supports 60,000 jobs and has about a $3 billion economic impact, and it’s not just during Kentucky Derby week as we just saw last week at Churchill Downs, it’s year round,” Thayer said. “We have the best year round racing circuit in the country.”

Thayer immediately took action during the 2021 legislative session to protect one of the horse industry’s greatest revenue sources — historical horse racing machines. As majority leader, he led the charge to legalize HHR machines by including them in Kentucky law’s definition of pari-mutuel wagering.  

The bill passed on slim margins. Thayer said that since it became law, Kentucky has seen investments across the state by people like Ron Winchell and Mac Falcone, owners and managing partners of Kentucky Downs.

“It’s very gratifying to see the growth not only on the racing side, which is tremendous, but also, when you see the build out of facilities like this that Ron and Marc are doing here that are creating year round, well-paying jobs,” Thayer said.

“… I think it’s a testament to our foresight in passing the bill, but also the private investment made by people like Ron and Marc in this community.”