The 275,000-sq-ft facility features a clubhouse with modern amenities and a new paddock. Rendering courtesy Populous

The building features a basement and five above-ground levels with an outdoor terrace at the top level that provides expansive views of the site. The building is topped by a sweeping signature canopy. McWilliam says that part of the mission to honor the traditions of horse racing was improving access to areas beyond the track. She notes that most venues focus almost entirely on the track, “turning their back” on other parts of race day. “It’s not just the two minutes that the horses are on the track,” she says. “You’ve got the horses entering the paddock, parading through the paddock and being saddled. Then, the jockeys mounting and going out to the track, doing the post parade and then making their way to the starting gate. Then, it’s the race itself, and the pageantry of the winner circle.”

To enhance access, the design creates views of the track on one side and views of the paddock on the opposite side, including the venue’s iconic Japanese white pine that was preserved at the center of the paddock.

The new five-level main track-side complex is sheltered by a large canopy.
Photo by Christine Kozak, courtesy NYRA

Updated Operations

Beyond the guest experience, the design aims to optimize operations while addressing the varying needs of owners, trainers and jockeys. Much of the backbone of the operations is located in the basement. Spaces include: a marshaling yard and loading dock; a security operations center; staff check-in; jockey areas, including quarters, a modern locker room, steam room, sauna and a laundry center with dry cleaning style rotating racks; multipurpose rooms; trade shops for building engineers; green room for talent; a media workroom; office spaces; a vault; electrical service rooms; a chiller plant; and kitchen spaces. Commissary kitchens are on the east side, near a bank of service elevators. A hot-and-cold food holding area on the west side is adjacent to another bank of elevators.

Going up through the building, back-of-house infrastructure is primarily located around the elevator cores, including the routing of many building systems. At the guest levels, finishing kitchens are located around the cores. General concessions and a sports bar are located on the first floor. Above the first floor, the facility features more premium hospitality spaces, including multiple restaurants and bars. A major aspect of the project is transitioning away from the existing open-air structure that only allowed limited seasonal operations. The facility can now operate year-round, McWilliam says, and the team needed to build in flexibility to allow it to go from hosting anywhere from 2,000 to 50,000, depending on the event and the time of year.

Creating an all-weather venue was not just a design goal. Roger Cettina, senior vice president at AECOM Tishman, says a main driver of the aggressive two-year schedule was closing in the building and keeping it out of the elements during construction. “We were demoing the old building and I’m looking at the schedule and the concern is, how do we make the place watertight?” he recalls “We need to build the mechanical systems inside, we need to do the elevators, and we need to start building the actual finished spaces.”

Keeping the building dry was a top priority in order to enable crews to fast-track interior work on a tight schedule.
Photo by Christine Kozak, courtesy NYRA

Fast Track to the Finish

After roughly six months of demolition, crews started foundation work in September 2024. “It was a mad push from Day 1 to get the structure up,” Cettina says.

The structure sits on spread footing foundations, including some that were retained and reused from the previous structure. Cettina says the soils, like most of Long Island, are sandy and the water level is about 30 ft below grade. The building is set on a reinforced concrete structure up to Level 3. Concrete elevator and stair cores on either end of the building extend to the top floor. Above the third level, the building is structural steel, including the roof canopy.

Crews started constructing the footings and foundation walls, working from west to east. Once the foundation was roughly 75% done, Cettina says crews framed the ground floor and constructed basement shear walls and elevator shaft walls. In January 2025, the superstructure concrete contractor was mobilized.

To help with procurement, the design enabled crews to start right away on structural concrete, allowing for the possibility of long lead times on the steel. AECOM Tishman also prepurchased items, particularly electrical and mechanical equipment, to mitigate the potential for delays. Prepurchased items included switchgear, distribution boards, an emergency generator, rooftop HVAC units and chillers.

Above the concrete structure, steel columns extend three floors to the roof and the canopy, which is also structural steel. The concrete cores extend to the roof. The steel structure then ties into the concrete cores.

In July 2025, the steel contractor was mobilized and started work above the completed west half of the structure while concrete crews completed the east half.

Most elevated work on the new facility could be completed with boom lifts.
Photo by Christine Kozak, courtesy NYRA

As the structure came out of the ground, keeping water out became a constant concern, especially with so much critical equipment and infrastructure in the basement. Crews hooked up drains and added temporary waterproofing around shafts that come out of the basement so that crews could build out the lower floors. “We’ll leave people here if we’re going to have a lot of rain, just to make sure we can manage it,” he adds.

Although the building is only six levels, each one is unique. “The challenging thing is that the third floor has tiered dining and club seats, while the fourth floor is all the suites,” Cettina says. “The second floor’s got a bunch of clubs. The ceilings are all different. The floor tile is all different. Everything is different.”

With weather and water always a concern, the next big milestone was getting the building all closed in before winter. Crews started work in October on the facade, which consisted mostly of roughly 1,000 unitized panels and 3,800 metal panels. By the end of the year, the majority of the facade, with the exception of some metal panels, was complete. Exterior work was done primarily with boom lifts.

Although facade work stayed on schedule, winter still provided challenges. Two major snowstorms hit the area. The first left nearly a foot of snow on the metal roof. When a second larger storm hit the area in February, dropping nearly 30 in. on Long Island, Cettina says he feared the worst.

“The next morning, I got up on the roof and there was no snow,” Cettina says. “It was so windy and the wind was blowing the right way [so] that snow was everywhere but the roof. And I just like looked up to the sky and I blew a kiss.”

Throughout the project, the team collaborated regularly to find ways to save time and money on the project. In one case, AECOM Tishman recommended changing the walls in the basement from masonry to mold-resistant drywall. “That saved roughly $2 million and made our lives a lot easier,” Cettina adds.

With the project on a fast-track schedule, a lot of the designs were incomplete during construction, especially interiors. John Krush, project executive for NYRA, says Populous staffed two architects on site during construction to help speed decision-making. “A lot of stuff that would normally go through RFI and change orders, we ended up doing on the fly,” he says. “It was nice to be able to work directly with an architect who could make decisions and sign off on them.”

New tunnels created under a separate project will give guests access to the infield.
Photo by Christine Kozak, courtesy NYRA

With a partial open scheduled for Sept. 18, crews are finishing up the first two levels of interiors. Sitework on the paddock is also being completed. The third and fourth levels will be complete by the end of the year. The fifth floor is being left as shell space for future use. The project is currently at peak manpower with roughly 400 workers on site, six days per week. The project is working under a project labor agreement with most trades coming from Nassau County.

“The challenge was always how do you maintain the tradition of horse racing and also reenergize it through modern architecture?” Krush says. “The team did an exceptional job, and this will go down as the new high watermark for any future racetracks.”