On Wednesday afternoon, I saw a video on Twitter that spanned the newly renovated ground floor of the clubhouse at Saratoga Race Course, and my jaw dropped. I may have actually winced. I felt a little sick.

I had seen photos of the new Jim Dandy Bar, relocated and expanded, and they didn’t elicit much of a reaction from me: the Jim Dandy Bar that I had known and loved for decades disappeared a number of years ago, replaced with a soulless, sparse space, so I figured that anything would be an upgrade, even though I was kind of sad to learn that the women’s bathroom, my favorite on the track, had been eliminated.

But I had heard nothing about changes to the other side of the ground-floor space, the wall with the big, red-and-white, lightbulb-lit toteboard, the betting windows framed by arched, carved woodwork and the signs with a distinct calligraphy.

So when I saw the video of the renovated space, which was described by one observer as “turning an icon into an airport Marriott,” I was stunned as much as I was disappointed.

Inarguably, parts of Saratoga Race Course need to be updated and modernized, and balancing that need with honoring the elements of Saratoga that make it unique is no easy task.

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