Bet big on the new Belmont.
Long Island’s racing crown jewel is now Nassau County’s front-runner, with a futuristic new look, an added track to introduce winter racing, first-class dining and amenities, plus acres of a game-changing spectator infield that can be repurposed for concerts and other non-equestrian events.
“I think we’ve improved the everyday fan experience quite dramatically,” NYRA CEO David O’Rourke told The Post before Friday’s long-awaited “Return to Racing” events.
Belmont Park underwent a three-year, start-from-scratch rebuild into a significantly smaller but highly sophisticated $455M grandstand. The new space is 300,000 square feet, down from 1.25 million, for broadly open-air-focused renovations for the public to trot themselves.
Hold your horses, though.
Belmont remains a work in progress, with only two of the grandstand’s five levels open for business: a ground floor for comfortable general admission, bars and bites, with sit-down restaurants, clubs and a NYRA betting room above.
Luxury suite levels and a balcony event space overlooking the sweeping NYC skyline, which could host a wedding, will be the finishing touches.
Other areas of the complex, like its newly accessible, spread out infield, trackside scenic open areas and an underground tunnel connecting the campus to the far-away emerald parking lot, are also still to be completed.
Its true ribbon cutting is expected in early 2027 — ahead of the long-awaited return of June’s Belmont Stakes, which has been run upstate in Saratoga since 2023.
Belmont’s face-lift also included a $100M renovation of the Belmont Stakes’ iconic 1 ¹/₂-mile dirt track plus two turf tracks and introduced a 1-mile Tapeta oval.
The synthetic Tapeta track will be used for winter racing instead of Queens’ recently shut down Aqueduct Racetrack. The new grandstand’s design includes a more effective, climate controlled indoor space for spectators during cold-weather runs, such as the Breeders’ Cup in October 2027.
“The old Belmont didn’t have a lot of heated areas,” said project builder Roger Cettina, a senior vice president at AECOM Tishman. “If you came in October and it was a cold day — it was cold.”
The new, visibly brighter grandstand will seat 10,000 for most race days and 50,000 or more for the Belmont Stakes — the same capacity the Triple Crown finale operated at since the construction of the Islanders home on campus, UBS Arena, over a decade ago.
It was about 90,000 before that.
The property will hold 6,000 for Friday’s welcome back and will temporarily drop to 4,000 for events after Sept. 24.
Cettina said racetracks that rival the scale of college football stadiums are “not the nature of this game anymore,” largely because of online gambling.
“Back then there was one way to bet: You would go to the track,” said Cettina, also a storied horse gambler who was inducted into the National Horseplayers Championship Hall of Fame in 2017.
New Belmont traded its former excess peanut-gallery seating on the home stretch side for comfortable and closer-to-the-action views — such as the watering hole Big Red’s, named for the iconic Secretariat and with royal blue chairs to match his jockey’s colors.
That zone also has a stage set for country star Dierks Bentley to play on Friday, as more of the opened-up portion is still being built into general-admission, ground-level parklike space.
Belmont’s paddock is also easily accessible and twice as large as before.
It emphasizes the concept of having fans roam the grounds rather than being tied to bulk seating, with an incoming playground nearby and the goal of offering pony rides for kids.
“We wanted to keep a lot of exposure to the animals with the public,” O’Rourke said, noting that the area could also double as an intimate concert venue. “It’s something we probably learned a little bit more from the European style, where a lot of the focus on the hospitality is around the paddock.”
The inviting paddock, near a built-in TV studio, sits behind the grandstand and track, but is easily viewable from inside as the new complex is equipped for dual-side sight lines — something missing from old Belmont.
“You’re probably never more than 30 feet away from any kind of view of each side of the track,” O’Rourke added.
Horses now proceed from the paddock to the track through an opening in the grandstand surrounded by glass windows for fans to look on too.
The track also invested in thoroughbred at the hands of signature chef and Food Network star Marc Forgione — a one-time local Floral Park boy who would scrape change together with friends to give to an adult to place bets on their behalf.
“We won a trifecta, which, at the time, I didn’t even know what a trifecta was,” he laughed.
Now Forgione is serving up his own signature winners at the new Turf Club and other restaurants. Guests can enjoy chili lobster on Texas toast, chicken under a brick, and choice cuts with “gorgeous” bone marrow gremolata.
The homegrown talent will also have more straight-laced options, like turkey clubs and penne à la vodka.
O’Rourke called the track’s reopening a personal triple crown for the entire campus, which, along with UBS Arena, features an extensive shopping district.
Belmont’s next steps, or perhaps gallops, are endless, he added.
“We’re looking forward to bringing the fans back on track. It’s exciting.”
