Belmont casino for sale for $3.5M; gravel deposits valued

BELMONT — For the second time in less than a decade the property on Route 106 that originally began as greyhound race track and ultimately became a charitable gaming venue is for sale.

Last weekend the Manchester Union-Leader newspaper reported that Ryan Goddy, the general manager of the Lakes Region Casino, confirmed that the 213-acre property has been on the market for the past two months at an asking price of $3.5 million.

The venue is owned by Potts Gaming, LLC, whose principal Craig K. Potts of Scottsdale, Arizona, the former president and chief executive officer of Cash Systems, Inc., then the largest provider of cash access services to the gaming industry, operates gaming establishments in Alabama and the Caribbean. Potts could not be reached for comment.

The facility has rooms for table games — roulette and craps— and bingo and stages two poker tournaments, some with guaranteed winnings of $1,000, nightly. It employs about three dozen people and contributes to about 20 charities in the region.

The property has been a gaming venue since 1975 when it opened as Berenson's Belmont Greyhound Track. In 1991, it was acquired by a partnership led by Al Hart who changed its name to Lakes Region Greyhound Park. By offering rebates, or returning a share of wagers — win or lose — at the end of the day, and telephone betting, Hart turned a $10-million business into a $75-million enterprise. But, in 2005, he was compelled to surrender his gaming license and negotiate the sale of the track after two employees were indicted in New York for their part in an illegal gambling conspiracy.

Potts partnered with Marlin Torguson, of the Torguson Gaming Group, which owns casinos on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, to acquire the track for $4.1 million, an investment in anticipation that the Legislature would authorize casino gambling and slot machines. In 2006, after investing $1.5 million to renovate the 35,000-square-foot facility, the venue opened as The Lodge at Belmont, offering live greyhound racing, simulcast wagering on greyhound, thoroughbred and harness racing as well as as dining and live entertainment.

However, the Legislature repeatedly refused to authorize an expansion of gambling and with the prohibition of live greyhound racing and taxation of gambling winnings in 2009 revenues at the venue plummeted. Pari-mutuel wagering, Since 2011, when the Lodge at Belmont became the Lakes Region Casino, it has operated primarily as a charitable gaming hall, with dining and live entertainment.

Rick Newman, former general manager of the Lodge at Belmont, estimated that Potts has approximately $8 million invested in the enterprise. Although the property is grandfathered as a pari-mutuel venue, Newman doubted that it would ever become more than a charitable gaming venue. "It is one of the three or four largest charitable gaming operations in the state," he said. But, he explained, in the unlikely event the Legislature agrees to introduce casino gambling with video slot machines, Belmont is even less likely to become a venue.

While the property is no longer a gambling gold mine, it does lie between two sand and gravel and its atop significant deposits of its own.