Fasig-Tipton’s renovation and expansion of its Humphrey S. Finney Pavilion in Upstate New York will cost several million dollars, according to a Nov. 14 report in the Albany Business Review. In plans filed with the city of Saratoga Springs, the auction company’s officials said they would use bluestone, slate, brick, and historic wood fencing to create a more upscale facility.
“We want this business to become the premier place in the world to buy and selling yearlings,” said Fasig-Tipton president Boyd Browning in the Business Review story.
Fasig-Tipton was sold to Dubai-based Synergy Investments earlier this year. Since the transaction was completed, the company has access to more money for building improvements and marketing that will help Fasig-Tipton attract more business and improve the auction experience, Boyd was reported to have said.
Fasig-Tipton conducts its Saratoga select yearling sale and New York-bred preferred yearling sale in New York each August
“It’s accurate enough,” said Browning Nov. 17 of the Business Review’s story. “We don’t have all the specifics yet, but we do plan to improve the Saratoga facility and our goal is to make Saratoga the best place in the world to buy and sell yearlings. We’re trying to improve all the sales we conduct. We want to have the best 2-year-old sale in world and the best November mixed sale in the world. That’s a natural human competitive instinct. We have some opportunities available to us now and some resources that may not have existed in the past.
“The (Saratoga) extension involves six feet at the front of the pavilion, facing East Avenue, which will give us a little more space to meet code requirements for wheelchair access and fire issues,” Browning continued. “It will be a small addition of footage. We don’t know the exact materials we’ll use right now. If we do it, we want it to be nice. When we renovated our pavilion in Kentucky, it was a noticeable improvement, and if we do something at Saratoga, we want it to be a noticeable improvement. It’s still in the early stages.”
Fasig-Tipton is working with a team from idea source, a Louisville, Ky.-based architectural and design firm, on the Saratoga renovation project. Idea source was involved in a major renovation of Fasig-Tipton’s Kentucky sale pavilion that was completed prior to the 2007 July select yearling auction and also is providing advice on a planned renovation of the sale pavilion used by Fasig-Tipton in Maryland.
