Sports Haven Sells For $6M

A Queens builder has purchased the Sports Haven complex on Long Wharf for $6 million — and the betting money is on a long-term transformation of the oil drum-shaped gambling mecca and its asphalt sea of surface parking.

According to the city’s online land records database, on March 31, 600 Long Wharf Drive Industrial LLC purchased the 600 Long Wharf Dr. property from Sportech Venues Inc. for $6 million. (See other recent land transactions in town lower in this article.)

The city last appraised the 9.75-acre Sports Haven property as worth just over $8 million.

The new ownership company is controlled by the Astoria, Queens-based Criterion Group. The seller is a division of a United Kingdom-based betting technology company that runs off-track betting venues across the state. (New Haven Biz first reported on the then-pending sale back in November.)

Both Sportech President Ted Taylor and Criterion Group Managing Director Richard Green told the Independent in separate interviews Friday morning that, at least for the immediate future, the 600 Long Wharf Dr. site will continue to host Sports Haven’s current operations.

Taylor described the cavernous concrete building as ​“the place you go if you want to place a bet on the horses, greyhounds, or Jai alai.” It also has a bar and restaurant.

Sportech has signed an 18-month lease with the new owners as the off-track betting company looks around the state for a new primary location, Taylor said.

“The building’s been around for a long time. It’s old and tired and it’s for a different generation,” he said when asked why his company decided to sell 600 Long Wharf.

“We need something a bit more built to purpose, and we’ve decided to start looking for new locations.”

He added that the pandemic and associated restrictions at indoor entertainment venues over the past year have exacerbated a downward trend in attendance at Sports Haven. Nevertheless, he said, Sports Haven will host its annual watching party for the Kentucky Derby on Saturday, while following existing capacity limits.

Green, meanwhile, told the Independent that his Queens-based company has not yet settled on what to do with the newly acquired site after Sportech’s short-term lease is up.

This is the first property the Criterion Group has purchased in Connecticut, he said. Given its large footprint, waterfront location, and easy access to two highways, two train stations, and the port, it could be repurposed for a wide variety of future uses.

He said that the Criterion Group has ​“largely focused on multi-family, industrial, and self-storage” developments over their past 20 years acquiring and building up properties in Queens, Long Island, and New Jersey.

“We believe this property can be an important part of the revitalization of the New Haven waterfront, and we look forward to working with the City of New Haven on our plans for the property,” he said. ​“Sports Haven will continue to operate at the property, and we hope they can be part of our long term development of the property.”

City Deputy Economic Development Administrators Steve Fontana (pictured) and Carlos Eyzaguirre, meanwhile, told the Independent that the change of ownership of this massive, flat, waterfront property presents an opportunity for to encourage the type of redevelopment the city has long wanted to see on Long Wharf.

Fontana said that early conversations with the new owners about their future plans for the site have focused on the Criterion Group potentially building out an industrial complement to a business incubator like the District.

The site could host a variety of smaller companies working in such areas as light assembly, warehousing, distribution, advanced manufacturing, and food processing, he said.

“People who are starting off who need a space” to build out their businesses could turn to such a location for a shared space to try out a business idea and see if they can grow.

“I think it has some interesting potential.”

“Lose Our Goddamn Money”

Whatever the future holds for the Sports Haven site under its new owners, the off-track betting arena — with its colossal, industrial aesthetic and towering, kinetic ​“Fast Track” horseracing mural painted by local firefighter-turned-artist Tony Falcone—remains a local landmark thanks to its scale, location, visibility, and decades-long endurance.

Leaving the venue with a friend on Thursday afternoon, Ray Howard — who declined to be photographed for this article — told the Independent that he’s been coming to the Sports Haven site since the 1980s.

When asked what he likes about the place, he paused. With a laugh and a shake of his head, he offered what can only be described as an off-track betting philosopher’s theory of the universe.

“We’d come here. We’d have some beer. And we’d lose our goddamn money,” he said.

Another Sports Haven customer, who declined to share his name or be photographed on Thursday, said he was stopping by the site to ​“pick up a number for my wife.”

Has he or his wife ever picked a lucky number and won the cash prize?

“A couple times,” he said, before turning and heading towards the arena’s front doors.

Mixed Feelings For Mural Artist

Falcone — who designed and painted the horseracing mural that covers the building’s drum-shaped exterior — called the potential loss of the building, and the mural, bittersweet.

“I have mixed feelings,” he said Friday. ​“It’ll probably be knocked down or the painting will be removed. That’s part of being a public mural artist. One the things you have to understand is this happens. I’ve painted quite a few murals. Some have endured, some have been painted over.”

Initially, he recalled, he wanted to paint a mural ​“all about the beauty of horse breeding, and mares and foals,” he said.

The owners of Sports Haven instead asked him to paint jockeys mid-race.

So in 1995 and 1996, Falcone and fellow artist Lori Vogler painted the two murals that currently adorn the eastern and northern sides of the building. The first shows a group of jockeys and horses at the start of the race, the second shows a single jockey riding mid-turn in a race.

“I built a scale model and designed the mural to go all the way from east to west,” Falcone recalled. He had planned on painting another four 90-foot-long horses, with the goal of showing the beginning of the race, making the turn, and the final stretch to the finish line.

“They decided they wanted to put big lettering” reading Sports Haven on the side of the building instead, Falcone said about the then-owners. ​“I never got to realize my vision” for showing the whole race.

Falcone added that, when people find out that he is the artist behind the Sports Haven murals, they often say it must have been terrifying climbing scaffolding dozens of feet in air to paint such a large mural.

He said that this was actually one of the least anxiety-inducing projects he’s worked on. The scariest part of being a portrait artist is the moment you show a work of art to the subject of your painting, he said, and you find out whether or not the person pictured hates how you’ve depicted them.

With this mural, he said, he never had to worry about an angry subject knocking on his door.

Oil Drum Chic

A Connecticut Historical Commission historic resources inventory filing from 1980 by the New Haven Preservation Trust, meanwhile, shows that the horseracing mural isn’t the only enduring aesthetic appeal of the Sports Haven complex.

The building itself was designed by local architect Herb Newman and constructed in 1979 as the Teletrack building.

“The building represents an innovating type of recreational facility,” that historic resources inventory form reads. “It is the first building in the country with a program of its type (legalized gambling facility based on races shown via large-scale television theater).

“The design of Teletrack was intended to enhance a feeling of excitement (responding to the short period of time it takes to watch an individual race), drawing on electronic neon and computerized aspects of visual culture today. ...

“The design of the Teletrack building also responds to the realities of its site: the drum-like mass echoes the large area of oil drums nearby to the east.”

A February 1981 article in the magazine the Architectural Record referred to the newly constructed Teletrack building as “the world’s first Theater of Racing.”

“Glimpsed from a car on the nearby Connecticut Turnpike, Teletrack’s cylindrical amphitheater might briefly be mistaken for one of the oil storage tanks that dot the surrounding flatlands,” that article reads. “But there’s no chance of confusion as soon as one sights the flourish of neo graphics and festive signage that announce the building’s horsy theme. Inside, a combination of closed-circuit television and computerized off-track betting enables 2,200 spectators to place wagers with Connecticut’s OTB system while watching live thoroughbred racing—transmitted via microwave from five New York tracks and projected in full color on a 24-by 32-foot screen.”

On Friday, Sportech President Taylor said that, while the circular design of the building may mirror and play off of the look of the nearby oil tanks on the harbor, the layout of the building “makes it very, very, very hard to run as an operational basis.”

“It’s hard to do big renovations in there because the ceilings are 50 feet high,” he said. “It’s very, very challenging.” Off-track betting has taken place in that building for more than 40 year, he said. “It’s time for a change.”

Mandy Acquires 44 More Apts. For $3.9M

In other recent property transactions, affiliates of the local mega-landlord Mandy Management continued to expand by leaps and bounds, spending over $3.9 million acquiring 17 different properties containing 44 different apartments.

Those recent acquisitions include:

• The six-unit apartment building at 12 Lilac St., bought by the Mandy-controlled holding company SFR 2 DE LLC for $550,000 on March 24.

• The four-family house at 88 Elizabeth Ann Dr., bought by SFR 2 DE LLC for $410,000 on March 8.

• The three-family house at 211 Alden Ave., bought by SFR 2 DE LLC for $360,000 on March 31.

• The three-family house at 26 Lyon St., bought by the Mandy-controlled Gur New Haven III LLC for $360,000 on March 31.

• The three-family house at 322 Sherman Ave., bought by SFR 2 DE LLC for $272,500 on March 20.

• The three-family house at 642 Whalley Ave., bought by SFR 2 DE LLC for for $240,000 on April 21.

• The two-family house at 127 Pond Lily Ave., bought by SFR 2 DE LLC for $237,500 on April 2.

• The two-family house at 124 Hubinger St., bought by SFR 2 DE LLC for $200,000 on April 21.

• The three-family house at 414 Orchard St., bought by Gur New Haven III LLC for $175,000 on April 16.

• The two-family house at 29 Rock Creek Rd., bought by SFR 2 DE LLC for for $165,000 on April 15.

• The two-family house at 33 Carmel St., bought by SFR 2 DE LLC for $162,500 on March 11.

• The two-family house at 15 Alton St., bought by SFR 2 DE LLC for $162,500 on March 11.

• The two-family house at 115 Lloyd St., bought by SFR 2 DE LLC for $162,500 on March 11.

• The two-family house at 295 Lloyd St., bought by SFR 2 DE LLC for $162,500 on March 11.

• The two-family house at 6 Arch St., bought by SFR 2 DE LLC for $146,737 on March 30.

• The two-family house at 105 Shepard St., bought by Omar Gonzalez for $98,000 at a foreclosure sale on July 9, 2020 and then quit-claimed for $1 to Gur New Haven III LLC on April 8.

• The single-family house at 80 Saltonstall Ave., bought by Gur New Haven III LLC for $98,000 on Jan. 15.