May 22 – CHEYENNE – Wyoming Horse Racing LLC is less than a month closer to the grand opening of the largest off-track horse racing betting facility in Laramie County.
The 30,000-square-foot facility is the result of a $25 million investment from WHR and will provide 140 full- and part-time jobs, in addition to 150 temporary construction jobs, WHR officials said. They estimate the new entertainment facility will generate $2.6 million annually for Wyoming state, city and county budgets.
This week, the facility, called Swan Ranch Horse Palace, celebrated the “pinnacle,” the installation of the final structural beam, heralding the final stages of the building’s construction and its quickly approaching opening.
With the main building nearing completion, construction crews are working to complete the interior and update the exterior for the anticipated June 19 opening day.
When this is complete, visitors coming through the main entrance will see a grand statue of a horse lowering its head to drink water. To the left will be an area filled with slot machines, what WHR calls the “players club,” and to the right, a long, sleek, curved bar will run along the back wall before meeting an area that will be a restaurant, mainly a restaurant. Steak House.
An entertainment stage will be located right in front of the main entrance, where WHR hopes to host local musicians and other events.
In addition, the facility will also be home to Wyoming’s second Dunkin’ Donuts location. The only other location is at FE Warren Air Force Base.
The building’s high ceilings are painted blue to reflect the clear blue sky of Wyoming, and are crossed by large exposed wooden beams – an homage to horse arcades of the past. The architectural design of the building was completed by Pouppirt Architects & Construction of Cheyenne.
WHR opened its ninth Horse Palace in downtown Cheyenne in the summer of 2022. This 10th location, although located in Laramie County, is primarily intended to attract the greater Colorado market south.
“Cheyenne has somewhere between 60,000 and 70,000 people, but our target audience is 1.2 million within, you know, just 45 minutes,” says Stephan Gibson, WHR marketing director. “So that’s where we’re going, that’s our target audience.”
He said 75% of the marketing for the facility is aimed at a Colorado audience, using advertising in local media and working to bring musicians from the Cheyenne and Fort Collins, Colorado, areas to the venue.
The Swan Ranch Horse Palace’s closest competitors are in Black Hawk, Colorado, a small mountain town 30 miles west of Denver.
Steven Jimenez, general manager of WHR, said, “We are a Wyoming company and we want to continue to bring out-of-state dollars into Wyoming to grow the purses and the agriculture and everything in the horse racing industry, so that’s what we trying to do.”
Near Evanston, WHR is building a similar facility, albeit slightly smaller, with a similar goal: bringing out-of-state dollars into the Wyoming economy and the Wyoming horse racing industry. However, the Evanston Horse Palace focuses largely on the Utah market.
The entertainment center occupies just a portion of the nearly 100-acre property WHR owns at the Cheyenne Logistics Hub, formerly known as the Swan Ranch Industrial Park. Jimenez said if this location goes well, there could be potential to expand the facility or possibly pursue other ventures in the other part of the country.
“Colorado’s Front Range communities are about to experience a whole new level of entertainment,” said Nick Hughes, president of WHR in a press release. “The Swan Ranch Horse Palace is a groundbreaking and refined gaming and entertainment experience – right on the Front Range’s doorstep. Convenience, Western hospitality and easy wins await just a short drive north.”
Jimenez said he envisions this Horse Palace as a place where people don’t just come to use the slot machines, but instead come for a well-rounded entertainment experience.
“If you only have machines, it’s not a complete entertainment experience. Because you’re going to have people who just come and eat, people who just come to watch entertainment, or they can do both,” Jiménez said. “Our goal is to do all that.”
Gibson said he hopes to have entertainment acts on most Friday and Saturday nights, and broadcast sports or other events on the 125-inch drop-down screen on other nights.
For customers excited about the new Dunkin’ Donuts location in the area that they can go to without getting a pass to FE Warren, there are a few caveats. The coffee shop will open approximately two weeks later, and admission to the Swan Ranch Horse Palace will be limited to those 21 and older. Gibson said he hopes to allow online deliveries at some point in the future to make it more accessible to the public.
Noah Zahn is the local government and business reporter for the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. He can be reached at 307-633-3128 or nzahn@wyomingnews.com. Follow him on X @NoahZahnn.
