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REBUILDING MOUNT ROYAL • "New Grandstand Is Main Item of 0,000 Building Program. • All Retails with Exception of Club House Will Be Ready for First Meeting Opening June 24. • MONTREAL. Que.. June 22— An almost wholly new racing plant, including a magnificent grandstand, will be presented to racing fans when the Mount Royal race track opens its summer meeting on St. Jean Bap-tiste Day, June 24. The former stand was destroyed by fire during the winter, and out of its ashes there arises a huge new stand of the finest ton-■truction, new entrances, fencing, judges stand, wagering ring, entrance, in fact, everything of the newest and best. The sum of J70.000 is being expended by directors of the Back River Jockey Club to bring the plant up to the modern mark it is assuming. A party of newspaper men visited the course yesterday and found it a throbbing hive of activity, with :he towering skeleton work of the new stand the center of work. No less than 154 carpenters, in addition to other workmen, were plying hammers and eaws on the stand and new buildings ; scores more were engaged placing the concrete foundations for new fencing ; others erecting a great new covered platform at the street car exits; others in excavatirg and sewerage work. Even the excavations for the big new club house are almost ready, though it is not planned to have this in operation until the second meeting. PROTECTION FROM WEATHER. An unique feature of the new Mount Royal plant is that race followers can attend on rainy days without fear of being touched by a drop of water. Right where the street cars stop a huge covered platform is being erected, and this debouches into a long covered walk that leads along the side of the fence, past the club house and on to the back of the great new stand itself. Inside the stand six sets of stairways lead down into the mutuel pi.int below, and on to the paddock, via still another covered section. From street car to paddock, back to the mutuels and into the stands without being affected by inclement weather is a feature which the management believes is unique in the Dominion. The new stand is 325 feet in length over all, sixty-eight feet deep, peats 4,700, has a twenty-five-foot overhang in front, a twenty-seven-foot elevation at the rear, and is seventeen feet from the ground in front, with three wide stairways leading into it from the lawns in addition to the six inner sets of stairways. It is constructed throughout of steel-reinforced British Columbia fir. In the front of the stand there will be forty-eight boxes. Inside, there is a mezzanine floor for ladies only, which will be at ti actively furnished, th-; arrangements at this point including a complete pari-mutuel department of four sellers and four cashiers. This mezzanine is 175 foet long and thirty feet in width, and will be divided into rest-rooms and dressing rooms. LOCATION OF STAND CHANGED. The new f-tand has been moved fifty feet further toward the head of the stretch, so that it abuts directly upon the paddock. At the rear of the stand, which is comfortably graded, the elevation is twenty-seven feet, from which it is possible to get a splendid view of every portion of the track, particularly of the stretch turn. A fault of the old stand was the difficulty in seeing anything except the finish, but this is remedied by the height and location of the new stand. The mutuel plant is below the stand. The new stewards cupola is being built In the infield, in keeping with the modern tendency, and will l e an attractive building. The new judges stand is of the small and low modern type, glass-backed, which causes the least obstruction in view to those behind it. The fencing along the inner part of the track, in front of the stands is all being torn down, and replaced by new steel fencing, with a board walk in between the inner and outer fences for the riders. R. M. Rodden was the architect on the stand and is supervising the construction work.
