A Last-Ditch Proposal
How a few benevolent horsemen are trying to save Suffolk Downs
By Mikaela Lefrak
The Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association sounds a bit like something out of a novel for pony-obsessed tweens. In fact, the real-life organization might be Suffolk Downs Racetrack’s last hope.
The owners of Suffolk Downs have been losing money hosting live thoroughbred races for years. Racing is really expensive to put on, and it’s just not that profitable anymore.
Think about how many people you know who go spend their Saturdays at the racetrack. With the exception of your grandpa, perhaps, it’s probably not many.
Most of the revenue from Suffolk Downs comes from hosting other types of gambing, like Keno. In an effort to save themselves, earlier this year the owners teamed up with Mohegan Sun to compete for the sole Greater Boston casino license, which would bring a much-needed revenue stream to the racetrack.
Trouble is, they lost.
On September 16, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission awarded the contract to Wynn Resorts in Everett. So on October 4, when the last day of the racing season at Suffolk Downs came and went, many folks also treated it as the last time they’d ever see racing at the 79-year-old track.
Until the benevolent horsemen decided to step in.
Right before the last day of racing, the New England chapter of the HBPA sent in a preliminary proposal to MassGaming asking for the authority to lease the Suffolk Downs track from its owners and run the races there through 2015.
“The big misnomer here is that it’s only about racing,” said NEHBPA Executive Director Bruce Patten over the phone.
He continued: “Racing is just a slice of the pie.”
What Patten’s referring to is exactly what his organization is trying to communicate to MassGaming — that the track isn’t just a track. It’s the keystone of an entire thoroughbred industry that, the NEHPBA believes, is worth saving for economic, historical, and environmental reasons.
The much bigger picture here is farming. “It’s a tremendous agricultural network that spreads across the four corners of the state,” says Patten. “All the money that goes into all those farms comes from racing.”
He’s being quite literal: Mass. gaming law requires that a sizeable portion of gambling revenue gets allocated to support the horse racing industry. And when horse owners win large races, they win purse money, which gets distributed through the system.
Patten also argues that the New England horse farms tied to Suffolk Downs are worth more than just their value to horsemen. “As most people understand, the number of farms has diminished substantially — they’re all getting paved over,” he says. Keeping Suffolk Downs running means preserving those open spaces, many of which have been managed by multiple generations of farmers.
The final peg of their argument is, of course, about jobs. Suffolk Downs employees somewhere between 800 and 1,500 people, depending on how widely you cast your net for dependent workers. Many of those workers are highly specialized: horse veterinarians and dentists, blacksmiths, pony boys, equipment vendors, and hay and grain farmers.
If the racetrack closes, not only will they be unemployed, but unemployable.
The HBPA is in as good a spot as anyone to win the bid. It’s so closely tied to Suffolk Downs that its offices are housed at the track. Right now they are trying to finalize the terms of its final proposal, due by November 15, with Suffolk Downs’s owners and lawyers.
“There a lot of dominoes to be examined,” says Patten. They have to hash out how they’ll lease the property, how all the job contracts will be handed. “But there’s no sign,” he continues, “that it can’t be done.”
The HBPA’s main competition comes from the owner of another shuttered track, Brockton Fairground. The owner, George Carney, wants to use the portion of revenue from a soon-to-be-opened slots parlor in Plainridge that must be set aside for supporting horse racing to reopen the track at Brockton. It’ll only work, though, if Suffolk Downs stays closed.
The MassGaming Commission held public hearing on Tuesday, October 21st to collect comments on the bids. They were supposed to decide which bid to take by November 15, but the deadline keeps getting pushed further and further back. According to a Suffolk Downs employee who requested anonymity, there has been “a lot of back room dealing going on.”
As of mid-December, there is still no news. Meanwhile, the employees wait patiently, to see if they’ll still have a job in 2015.
