Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll find out why the Belmont Stakes, the third leg of racing’s Triple Crown, won’t be run at Belmont Park on Saturday. We’ll also get details on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s unexpected 11th-hour decision to halt congestion pricing.
Belmont Park is a demolition site.
That’s why the Belmont Stakes will not take place there on Saturday. The race was moved to Saratoga, while Belmont gets a $455 million makeover.
But first the old Belmont had to go. “It’s a relic of racing’s heyday,” my colleague Melissa Hoppert told me, “when people would pack the stands” day after day, not just on the day of the Belmont Stakes. The grandstand was huge, longer than the Empire State Building is tall.
The crowds have since thinned out, except during the Belmont Stakes. “If you go to Belmont on any other race day,” she said, “there are 20 handicappers huddled around the rail.” The jockeys, trainers and horsemen outnumber the fans, or seem to.
The less crowded stands reflect changes in racing and betting in the last 10 years or so. People can still go to the track on big race days to take in the parade of gravity-defying hats and eye-catching outfits. But to bet on regular racing, they can just use their cellphones. The New York Racing Association, which runs Belmont Park, still makes money that way, so it doesn’t matter that the stands are not packed.
NYRA wants the new Belmont to be smaller, with a new building replacing the grandstand and the clubhouse and taking up less than a quarter of the square footage of the old structure. NYRA says that fans will get more open space for fans and more green space in a stretch of Nassau County that needs it. Or, as Patrick McKenna, a NYRA vice president, put it, “NYRA is looking to put the park back in Belmont Park.”
The demolition began in April and is expected to continue into the fall. On Wednesday an orange excavation machine was digging out debris on what used to be Big Sandy, the longest track in horse racing in the United States. The mess on Big Sandy piled there as beams came out, walls came down and concrete was ripped up.
NYRA wants a modern grandstand with restaurants and amenities like those at other tracks and stadiums, especially if the Breeders Cup is to be run at Belmont again. NYRA blames Belmont’s 1960s infrastructure and its lack of “winterized hospitality options” — heated dining areas and private suites — for the Breeders Cup’s disappearance from Belmont after the 2005 race.
The drawings of the new Belmont did not go over well with some traditionalists whose immediate reaction was: It looks like an airport terminal with too much glass. NYRA says the look was “an intentional departure from the current Belmont style.”
Some fans were also concerned that a Belmont icon — a Japanese white pine in the paddock — was nowhere to be seen in the first set of drawings. That tree was the inspiration for the Belmont Park logo. NYRA says the tree will be “surveyed and protected to the greatest extent possible,” as the old Belmont is demolished and the new one is built.
On Saturday a field of 10 horses, including the Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan and the Preakness Stakes winner Seize the Grey, will face off in a 1¼-mile race at Saratoga, a quarter-mile shorter than when the race was run at Belmont Park.
There may not be a race at Belmont Park on Saturday, but there will be a “watch party” in the Belmont backyard, adjacent to UBS Arena. It will begin at 1 p.m., more than five hours before the 6:40 p.m. post time for the Belmont Stakes, but there are 14 races on the card for Saturday. Attendees can bring folding chairs. They can buy Belmont’s signature drink, the Belmont jewel — bourbon, lemonade and pomegranate juice served over ice.
Weather
Prepare for showers and thunderstorms persisting through the evening, with temperatures in the low 80s dropping to the high 60s at night.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until June 12 (Shavuot).
The latest New York news
An indefinite halt for congestion pricing
Just weeks before New York was to begin charging motorists to drive into Midtown Manhattan, Gov. Kathy Hochul said she was putting the plan on hold indefinitely.
“I have come to the difficult decision that implementing the planned congestion pricing system risks too many unintended consequences,” she said. The plan was to have taken effect at the end of the month and would have charged drivers with E-ZPasses as much as $15 to drive into Manhattan south of 60th Street.
The decision was a stunning reversal that undercut years of planning. It was also a major setback for the M.T.A., which stood to collect the $1 billion that congestion pricing was expected to raise.
The agency already had plans for spending the money — projects that my colleague Winnie Hu called “unglamorous but essential work” that is usually unseen by passengers, like modernizing signals that date to the 1930s.
But Hochul said that instituting a toll to drive into Midtown Manhattan would “create another economic obstacle to our economy recovery.”
“Let’s be real,” she said. “A $15 charge may not seem like a lot to someone who has the means, but it can break the budget of a hard-working middle-class household.”
Hochul had notified the White House and the top House Democrat, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn, before announcing the move. According to my colleagues’ reporting, two people familiar with the conversations disputed reports that he had directed her to hold up the plan. A spokesman for Jeffries said that he “supports a temporary pause of limited duration to better understand the financial impact on working-class New Yorkers.”
What Happens Now
To make the pause official, Hochul will need the approval of the M.T.A. board, which she controls. The next regularly scheduled board meeting is to take place on June 24, six days before the plan was to have become a reality.
It is also not clear what the M.T.A. will do about a roughly $500 million contract it had already signed for things like the equipment to read the E-ZPasses or license plates of vehicles going in and out of the congestion pricing zone.
Another open question is what will happen to the equipment itself, which was put in place months ago.
METROPOLITAN diary
The giant bunny
Dear Diary:
I was leaving my apartment for a walk on a lazy Sunday. When the elevator arrived, the door opened like a portal to another galaxy.
Standing inside was a small woman dressed in black. She was carrying an enormous black bunny that seemed almost invisible until I noticed its blinking eyes.
“Get in,” the woman said, motioning me toward her.
Not knowing whether the giant bunny was friendly with strangers, I hesitated. Some bunnies can be combative.
The door began to close, and I hit the “open” button instinctively.
“Get in!” the woman shouted.
I stood there at a safe distance between myself and the giant bunny.
“What was the bunny doing outside?” I asked.
“She went out for a walk,” the woman said. “She loves interacting with humans. Are you coming in or not?”
I continued to hesitate.
“Come on,” she said. “You know who she is.”
“I do?”
The woman nodded, clutching the giant bunny, which by now was falling out of her arms.
“What is her name?” I asked.
The galactic portal began to close again. This time, I did not try to stop it. I got a last glimpse of the bunny. It was staring at me intensely.