Gamblers' Dream

On the outskirts of Camden, N.J., within sight of Philadelphia's skyscrapers, a new million-dollar race track is nearing completion. Last week the State Racing Commission approved its inaugural meeting: July 18 to Sept. 12. It will be Jersey's first flat racing with legalized betting since 1893.

How Garden State Park came to be is a mystery to many Garden Staters. Ever since Contractor Eugene Mori and a group of fellow Camden County businessmen succeeded in getting a license, there had been angry howls from local church and civic groups. Two months ago, when the grandstand was fast taking shape, irate Association for the Prevention of a Race Track in Camden County petitioned the War Production Board to freeze the essential war materials being squandered on a "gamblers' dream." WPB investigated-- not once but twice--found that no priorities had been violated, no vital labor absorbed. Said Leon Henderson: "The people who are building the track are quite ingenious." Indeed they are. All Garden State's structural materials had been purchased before Pearl Harbor; 60% of the metal was secondhand, the second-hand "Lai-lies" (concrete-filled steel cylinders) used in place of steel columns are unsuitable for scrap; wood was substituted for metal wherever possible; a sprinkler system was rented from a Florida track. Instead of the 1,900 tons of steel originally planned, Boss Mori got along with 300.

Garden State Park is the 15th U.S. race track to be built in the past seven years. Two of its immediate predecessors were short-lived: Florida's Gulfstream Park lasted four days, California's Golden Gate Park lasted five. But Mr. Mori's track will be spared close competition; it is the only race track within 25 miles of Philadelphia. Operating in midsummer, between the closing of Delaware Park and the opening of Havre de Grace, it will fill a gap in the midEastern Seaboard's horse-racing circuit. Well aware that racegoers have spent record-breaking millions at Maryland and New York tracks this spring, ingenious Mr. Mori figures that his park should attract plenty of Philadelphians this summer. It is 10-c- by bus, 12 minutes by auto (even at 30 m.p.h.) and only 200 yards from a main-line Pennsy depot. But Mr. Mori may not have figured on all the uncertainties of wartime living.

Should bus and railroad space be rationed like gasoline, he may wish that he had not been so ingenious.

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