The announcement last week that the main track and the Tapeta course at Belmont will soon be opened for limited training was just one more reminder that the unveiling of the new building is less than three months away.The new Belmont will open on Sept. 18 with the running of the GI Jockey Club Gold Cup. Only the first two floors will be open in September. NYRA officials have said that the entire five-floor structure should be open by the time of the GII Wood Memorial. The new 275,0000- square-foot building will be one-third the size of the old stands.In an era where corporate hospitality and pricey big events seem to be what everyone holding a sporting event is focusing on, NYRA has made sure that the new Belmont will cater to the deep-pocketed costumer, who might show up for the GI Belmont stakes and the Breeders' Cup only.The fifth-floor is composed of 32 luxury suites of which 16 have already been sold. The second floor includes outdoor box seats plus a more upscale area with a Turf Club. The third floor will include indoor box seating and indoor dining. In addition to the fifth floor, there will be hospitality and dining areas and bars spread across most of the track.“There are a lot of similarities when it comes to those two events, the Belmont and the Breeders' Cup, that give you a baseline of hospitality that will be require. and we have the ability too scale up for those events,” NYRA president and CEO David O'Rourke said. “You have to think about what is the cost of scaling up and what infrastructure you will need. These are fundamental things as you look at the old building. We knew the footprint and we knew the minimum levels of hospitality that we will need.”But Belmont must also serve the handful of people that will be rattling around the facility in February and the father of three who just wants an affordable day out at the track with his family and can't or doesn't want to pay for an expensive fee or eat hors d'oeuvres in a luxury box. O'Rourke said those people will be well taken care of, and said the price for general admission will be “nominal.”“What I would say that person is get your chairs, get here early and grab a picnic table and get yourself a nice spot,” O'Rourke said. “It will be like Saratoga in that sense.”Getting more families involved is pivotal to the sport's future,” O'Rourke said. He understands that the easiest way to create a racing fan is to get them to the track when they are young and expose them to the beauty and thrills of the sport.“(The new Belmont) will definitely get people back to the racetrack because it gives us the opportunity to try new things around them,” he said. “That is a demographic that has been missing and something I have been very focused on. That's part of the magic formula at Saratoga. Can you bring families back out? Here, as opposed to Saratoga, we will have to work a little bit harder to give someone a reason to bring the kids out on ta Saturday.The paddock of the new Belmont Park | Susie Raisher“This is our opportunity. With NYRA's structure as a non-profit, we get to play a really long game, and we should be playing a long game. How are you going to build the sport? You start at the most fundamental level and give people good childhood memories of something and that stays with people for a long time. The people who are really lifelong fans, you hear from their stories that they started out as a kid at the track.”Nearly every section of the stands will have a view of either the track, the paddock or both. That is by design.“The easiest sale I ever have to make is taking a kid and let them get near a horse,” O'Rourke said. “Then you let the beauty of the horse take over.”The paddock is almost finished, and it is noticeably larger than the old paddock. Care was taken to maintain aspects of the old paddock, including the Secretariat statue and the Japanese white pine tree that was featured on Belmont's logo.“I love paddocks,” O'Rourke said. “To me, a paddock is the heart of the track. Outside the racing surface, that's where the horses are for the longest period of time. That's why we wanted a really big, really nice one.”With the new building being so much smaller than the old one, NYRA has access to five acres of green space, most of it to the west side of the building.“This brings the park back into Belmont Park,” O'Rourke said. “Once you have a park, you can do all sorts of different things.”To rebuild the racing surfaces, $100 million was invested. The tracks already look ready to go and the turf courses are pristine and a glowing, healthy green.O'Rourke said that NYRA will know a lot more about the customer experience and what the fan is looking for when it comes to the facility after it has opened. Changes could be made depending on what parts of the track prove to be most popular.Aqueduct only has a few days to live. The future of racing in the New York metropolitan area is Belmont Park. It will have to be a lot of things to a lot of people, both luxurious and practical, which the old building certainly was not. O'Rourke and his teams are confident the new Belmont Park will be a smash hit.The post Week in Review: A New Era is Right Around the Corner for NYRA, Belmont Park appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.