Food fit for Oprah Winfrey and Maya Angelou will be on the menu at a new monster offtrack betting south of Cheyenne that will open sometime this summer.
Celebrity Chef Shawn Jackson will lead the kitchen at the soon-to-be opened Horse Palace at Swan Ranch a few miles north of the Wyoming-Colorado border along Interstate 25 at the High Plains Road exit.
It will feature parimutuel games, offtrack betting and a lot more. It’s a $25 million, 30,000-square-foot bet that Wyoming gaming destinations near the Colorado border can lasso more tourism dollars from Colorado.
In the meantime, an army of horse racing game machines stand at attention inside the facility. Their screens are dark as they await a much smaller, but more active, army of construction workers putting the finishing touches on their swanky new home.
The entryway will feature a huge statue of a horse lowering its head to drink from a fountain, while the back of the house features a curved bar that snakes through a large dining area.
The state’s second Dunkin’ Donuts will also find a home there.
Chef Jackson apprenticed under Chef Tell, America's first televised celebrity chef whose real name was Friedman Paul Erhardt. His mission is to create an unparalleled dining experience.
“I was the executive chef at a restaurant in Winston Salem in North Carolina,” Jackson told Cowboy State Daily. “Maya visited there quite often. And then in the early 2000s, Oprah did her show from Dr. Maya Angelou’s home, and I cooked for her and her staff for that show.”
Jackson had jambalaya on that menu, along with a number of other seafood dishes, even though Angelou is allergic to seafood.
But he also served a dreamy blueberry bread pudding. It’s one of his signature desserts, and it will be on the menu at the Horse Palace, along with a cheesecake du jour and other treats.
The main menu revolves around steak house favorites, with an occasional Italian twist.
There’s going to be brick chicken, scallops, and a 72-ounce porterhouse — just enough to feed about 12 hungry people, plus a huge bone suitable for a dog, or maybe even two dogs to tussle over.
“We’ll have some good pasta dishes,” Jackson said. “Anything Italian is always my love, and a strong point.”
Times Two
While it’s target audience are people from Colorado, the Cheyenne facility will spend some advertising money to attract Wyomingites.
“Our marketing spend right now, 75% is geared toward Fort Colins, Loveland, Greeley, that outer part of Denver,” General Manager Steven Jimenez told Cowboy State Daily during a tour of the facility Wednesday. “The remaining 25% is (in Wyoming), but the main goal is to get new tourism dollars into the state.”
The payday is huge for the state of Wyoming if the facility is successful.
It’s expected to generate $700,000 in purse money that will be paid to the owners of Wyoming-bred horses, as well as an estimated $2.6 million in annual tax revenue for state, city and county budgets.
There will be 140 long-term jobs, in addition to the 150 temporary construction jobs while the facility is being built.
Swan Ranch is just one of two new facilities Wyoming Horse Racing is building to capture more out-of-state tourism dollars.
The second is in Evanston, which will focus on attracting Utah residents.
The estimated annual tax revenue from that facility is $1.5 million, with a $400,000 contribution to the horse breeder’s fund.
It will be a smaller facility at $19.2 million, which will employ 90 people long-term.
The new $25 million, 30,000-square-foot Horse Palace at Swan Ranch, just off the High Plains Road exit on Interstate 25 about 4 miles north of the Colorado border, is getting closer to being ready to open. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
The new $25 million, 30,000-square-foot Horse Palace at Swan Ranch, just off the High Plains Road exit on Interstate 25 about 4 miles north of the Colorado border, is getting closer to being ready to open. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
The new $25 million, 30,000-square-foot Horse Palace at Swan Ranch, just off the High Plains Road exit on Interstate 25 about 4 miles north of the Colorado border, is getting closer to being ready to open. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily) 
The new $25 million, 30,000-square-foot Horse Palace at Swan Ranch, just off the High Plains Road exit on Interstate 25 about 4 miles north of the Colorado border, is getting closer to being ready to open. (Greg Johnson, Cowboy State Daily)
More Races — Eventually
The goal, according to Wyoming Horse Racing founder Eugene Joyce, who lives in Evanston, is to drive better and better purses, and ultimately drive more horse racing to the state.
“We think this is going to have a huge effect going forward,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “Our focus has been let’s see if we can’t make a big, big difference by shifting the paradigm to bring in out-of-state dollars to help our industry, versus putting up more and more off-track betting sties throughout the state.”
One of the big complaints he hears from legislators, Joyce said, is that there hasn’t been a dramatic increase in race days.
“But there’s a misconception about the economics of our sport,” Joyce said.
For one, it takes a big purse to attract horse owners to racing, Joyce said. He estimates it takes around $30,000 to train a racehorse from the moment the colt hits the ground to the time the 2-year-old runs that first race.
That figure means that a sizable racing purse is really the limiting factor when it comes to the population of racehorses.
“It’s really the horse population that’s going to dictate the amount of racing you can have,” Joyce said. “Because, as a horse owner, our industry is a slave to the calendar and the weather. You can only race pretty much from the middle of May to the end of September.”
Most owners, meanwhile, don’t want to run horses too often in a single season because it’s not good for them.
“You can really only run a horse six, seven times safely, without putting too much stress on the horse in the course of a summer,” Joyce said. “So, there’s other metrics for a heathy industry. And right now, what you want to do is infill, and have the requisite number of race days, and races versus the purse money, so that the average purse goes up. And that’s happening right now.”
The $25 million, 30,000-square-foot Horse Palace near the Colorado border is nearing completion. It will be open sometime this summer. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
An army of gaming machines await their spots in their new home, while a smaller but more active army of construction workers is putting the finishing touches on Wyoming Horse Racing's latest Horse Palace. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
A sky-blue ceiling evokes a sense of Wyoming sky, according to representatives of Wyoming Horse Palace. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Toning Down The Vegas Vibe
If all goes well with the two border facilities, and the ideal of attracting out-of-state tourists pans out, Joyce said he could envision building more border facilities near Montana, Idaho, or Nebraska.
These are remoter areas, though, and don’t have as large and juicy a market as Colorado and Utah offer.
“Our industry more than any other, is built on hope,” Joyce said. “And the success of historic horse racing has led to greater purses, greater breeder incentive money, and that’s really fueling what’s going on in this state right now.”
Joyce believes things are finally starting to gel the way he hoped they would in 2010, when he returned to Wyoming from Arizona, to try and restart horse racing in the Cowboy State.
“We’re experiencing quite a renaissance with our industry right now,” he said. “And it’ll be really exciting to see what happens in the next several years.”
Joyce hopes this approach will help alleviate criticism of the industry.
“People don’t want Wyoming to be Las Vegas,” Joyce said. “They don’t want these machines in every place they walk into in their city, and we agree. And that’s why our company’s focus is marrying tourism with gaming and focusing on building the larger places on the border, to bring out-of-state dollars to help fuel our economy.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
