“We don’t have any anticipation to make significant capital improvements right away because it is a very new facility,” Yopp Norris said. It is aware the casino’s original master plan included a hotel complex, she said.

The company has no plans to change Oxford Casino’s name. “Maine is a very business-friendly, gaming-friendly environment,” Churchill Downs spokeswoman Courtney Yopp Norris said. This would be its first property in New England. “There will be a complete investigation done, a background check of the new potential owners, and the board, once they amass that information, will make a decision sometime later this year.”īased in Louisville, Ky., Churchill Downs owns casinos in Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi. “This will not be a quick decision,” said Stephen McCausland, public information officer for the Maine Department of Public Safety. The board will take up the proposal at its April 16 meeting in Bangor. The sale isn’t expected to close until later this year and Churchill Downs must first win license approval in front of the Maine Gambling Control Board. Officials at Hollywood Casino, a Penn National Gaming-owned venue in Bangor, and Oxford’s only Maine competitor, declined to comment on the Churchill Downs acquisition Friday. “The gall of all this is incomprehensible.” “All this time they were saying it was going to be 100 percent locally owned they tried to use that against us,” Robinson said. During a referendum to win a casino in 2010, Black Bear trumpeted its local connections and, Robinson said, later dogged Lewiston when casino supporters there said they would fund the effort by partnering with a large, outside operator.

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