2002 - Harness Tracks of America, Inc.

HARNESS TRACKS OF AMERICA
Executive Newsletter
A daily fax and e-mail report on racing and gaming developments in North America and beyond
Stanley F. Bergstein, Editor
SPORTSMAN’S FOR SALE
It’s now official. Sportsman’s Park, a fixture on
the Chicago racing scene for more than 70 years,
is being offered for sale as “an 80-acre redevelopment
opportunity.” The real estate firm of Cushman
& Wakefield have sent out flyers announcing that
it has been retained to dispose of the track, which
is located 8.5 miles from Chicago’s downtown Loop,
2.5 miles north of Midway airport, and just a quarter
of a mile from a major artery interchange of I-
55 and Cicero Avenue. The flyer suggests that
the property can be used for retail, office/industrial,
hospitality, entertainment or healthcare development,
located as it is with a population of
889,000 within a five-mile radius. The track was
redesigned for auto racing a few years ago at staggering
cost, with 70,000 seats, but the experiment
was a failure and it appears that an era has ended
at the Chicago racing landmark.
NOVEL APPROACH AT RACEWAY
Match races and head-to-head competition are not
new, but innovation always is possible, even when
the idea is borrowed. Raceway Park in Toledo,
Ohio, did just that, borrowing Northfield Park’s
Walter Case vs. Herve Filion championship driver
format and then embellishing it with a creative twist
of its own. The two drivers, most successful in
North America in victories with more than 25,000
winning drives and 13 Harness Tracks of America
Driver of the Year awards between them, will meet
at Northfield Park in Cleveland next Friday and
Saturday night and then move to Toledo for the
Raceway feature Sunday, September 1. At Raceway,
instead of racing for points based on finishing
order, they will be given points based on the cumulative
mutuel payoff of their winning drives. A $3,
2.80, 2.40 mutuel would earn 8.2 points, for
example, and a $10.60 show price in the
same race would earn 10.6 points. Racing director
Scott Eggers’ idea.
August 26, 2002
VOTERS’ CALL AT PRAIRIE
Voters in Polk county, Iowa, the home of Prairie
Meadows Racetrack and Casino, will have the fate
of the operation in their hands come November.
A referendum will ask them to vote slot gambling
at the racino up or down. If they approve -- and
polls indicate they will -- prosperity will continue
at Prairie. If they were to vote down slots, racing
would die with them. Slots provide between $140
and $150 million a year in profit on more than $2
billion wagered on 1,500 machines. Horse racing
at Prairie operates at a loss, and will be subsidized
this year by $13 to $14 million from slot revenue.
INTANGIBLES JUST THAT
A state appeals board in Nevada has turned down
a casino’s argument that its property taxes should
be reduced 30% because of the value of the
casino’s “intangible assets.” The Four Queens
casino argued that the experience of its management
and its name recognition among customers
were part of those intangibles, but the appeals
board said no dice. The board did accept a more
tangible argument on appraisal, however, and lowered
the county assessor’s $45.9 million appraisal
of the 33-year-old property by $400,000.
NEW FORUM AT SYMPOSIUM
If you’re planning on attending the University of
Arizona’s Race Track Industry Program annual
symposium in Tucson in December -- and we hope
you are -- you might want to arrive a day early.
The RTIP has announcd that GEM Communications
will hold a one-day Racing and Gaming Summit
on Tuesday, Dec. 10, a day before the Symposium
gets underway. The gaming and wagering
mix will be discussed in five seminars. Summit
registration will be $295, or $595 for the
Summit and Symposium combined, a
$100 discount.