Night racing could be part of Thoroughbred Park's future.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Canberra Racing chief executive Darren Pearce has made inquiries about the process involved in being able to build lights as part of their $2 billion redevelopment.
He'll also conduct some twilight trials in the New Year to test his existing evidence there's an appetite for night racing in the capital.
Pearce said the addition of lights would need to be part of the redevelopment, which was going through the Territory Plan Variation process at the moment.
They hope to set up their financial future with a development, which could include 3300 dwellings in a mix of residential and commercial accommodation.
Part of that could be joining the global trend of night racing, which has already been successful in Hong Kong and Singapore.
Pearce said the race club needed to find better ways to connect with their customers and saw night racing as an option to help do that.
He's already started the process of discussing it with government and looking and what needed to be done for it to be acceptable for when the redevelopment was finished.
There wouldn't be any issues with having lights under the current set-up - Thoroughbred Park doesn't have any neighbours and was currently surrounded by paddock.
That will all hopefully change in the future when some of the land was redeveloped to include housing and other facilities.
"We've got to find better ways to connect to our customers and night racing's a growing part of the racing puzzle," Pearce told The Canberra Times.
"I've asked our planners to make inquiries through our re-zoning and master-plan process if we can get lights.
"That's as far as it's gone before we investigate and do due diligence on costings and feasibility.
"We need to know from a planning perspective if they can actually be approved in our location - and it's not just forecasting what we have today.
MORE CANBERRA SPORT
"It would be easy today because we haven't got neighbours and we're surrounded by paddocks.
"But if you throw forward 10 years then there's going to be a lot more real estate in the precinct and lights would have to be designed in a way that didn't cause light spill and disadvantage home owners.
"Am I interested in it? Absolutely. Do I think it should be part of our future? Absolutely. Do I know if I can do it? No.
"I've got to go through the planning process to see if that's an achievable outcome."
Pearce said they'd already seen increased interest in Canberra racing with the introduction of twilight races at Thoroughbred Park and he'll put that to the test with further twilight meets.
He said there was a growing trend towards night racing.
The Australian Turf Club has had approval for lights at Randwick in Sydney, while Caulfield and the Gold Coast had it as part of their master plan.
"The crowds get bigger as the days go on on Fridays - early on it's hard for people to knock off work or make arrangements to be here, but as the day goes on we tend to get more people coming and wanting to see the last few races and catch up with friends and have a drink and a bet," Pearce said.
"We're going to try a few twilights in the New Year around the night racing program - when we've got Fridays and Moonee Valley and Canterbury on - we're going to try and run them a bit later to do some twilight experiments to see if that trend continues and more people come later in the day."
Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content:
- Bookmark canberratimes.com.au
- Download our app
- Make sure you are signed up for our breaking and regular headlines newsletters
- Follow us on Twitter
- Follow us on Instagram