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There seems to be glimmer of hope for Fort Erie Racetrack, which has been balancing on the edge of oblivion lately. The owner, Nordic Gaming Corp., is claiming losses of at least $3million in each of the past four years and has indicated that if someone doesn’t help subsidize that red ink, they won’t continue horse racing at the 111 year old border track. Yesterday, the Fort Erie Economic and Tourism Corporation made a $35 million offer to Nordic to buy the track and operate it as a not for profit initiative…but this deal won’t work if the provincial government doesn’t put up the money. The Tourism group wants the province to fund the project with the property acting as collateral.
For Erie Race Track is the biggest industry in the town of 30,000. The track employs 350 people; Nordic announced in December that at least 190 would be laid off in March if there is no racing in 2009.
There are also between 1000 and 2000 people who count on Fort Erie to race their low level horses. Fort Erie offers a lot of claiming races for horses worth less than $10,000, horses that would have few opportunities to compete at Woodbine.
Used to be, Fort Erie was the place for the old timers to go camp for a month or so when the Woodbine meet closed down and the major league racing went to the border. But for the last 20 years or so, Woodbine has raced straight through from April to December, leaving Fort Erie with the leftover, less valuable stock. Woodbine sold Fort Erie to Nordic several years ago. Even so, Fort Erie has always been a useful option for many trainers and owners not certain of the quality of their horses. It has also been an important place for up and coming trainers and jockeys to learn their craft. Closing of the track would leave dozens of riders with virtually no place to work.
So $35 million to keep a vital industry still beating, saving up to 2000 jobs. Kind of looks like petty cash compared to the $4 Billion bailout the feds gave the car industry.
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Fingers crossed that this option plays out properly.
I would hate to see this beautiful track close.
Cheers
Keith
- Keith - Triple Dead HeatFrom a trainer’s point of view, Woodbine needs to adjust their expectations regarding Fort Erie Race Track and Slots’ giving up 200 of their machines to Woodbine. One of the main reasons that the horsemen at Fort Erie are suffering is because so many trainers at Woodbine ship their horses (which have an aversion for the Polytrack at Woodbine)to Fort Erie, whereupon they usually “smoke” in racehorse parlance (meaning they win easily), or finish second or third thereby taking the top purse monies and leaving crumbs for the Fort Erie horsemen who merely “fill” the races for Woodbine trainers. The H.B.P.A. (the owners’ and trainers’ association) at Woodbine needs to make the management at Woodbine aware of the hardships that would be placed upon their horsemen if they no longer had Fort Erie as an alternative outlet for their investments’ talents and, therefore, would have to sell them or go through the added expense and risk of shipping out of Ontario to the nearest non-polytrack racetrack in the U.S.A. Then the aspect of Workers’ Compensation come to mind as a further deterrent. Two hundred more slot machines at Woodbine would hardly be noticed there, but would leave quite a dent on the Fort Erie Slots floor. This needs to be worked out for the benefit of all the horsemen at Woodbine and Fort Erie.
- Donna McCulloughFor many years, Fort Erie has counted on a good number of Americans from the Buffalo and Western New York area to attend the track on a regular basis. In addition to the casinos that have sprung up in the area in the last ten years and “perceived” border hassles, you are now dealing with a community on the US side that is not only continually shrinking in population but it is getting poorer(Buffalo was listed as the third poorest city in the US behind Detroit and Cleveland). This has, in recent years, generally contributed to shrinking tourism in the Southern Ontario market from this area and the Fort Erie track has obviously suffered in kind. As you stated, Woodbine’s season has grown longer so people from the GTA are going to prefer to go there anyway. With the general decline in horse racing in North America, given all of the above, and despite the potential for extremely unfortunate job losses, I am not sure spending this money is going to bring the horse racing fan back and that is assuming there is still enough of them out there.
- RonI would like to thank you for your comments.
- pdmcbeckYou are entirely correct, we are looking for financial backing from the govn’t to make this deal happen.
They (the govn’t)approved a purchase to Nordic Gaming who has never had any interest in horseracing. This deal was only struck to offset the interest of Woodbine Entertainment to allow them to acquire as many slots geographical as possible at that time. Subsequently, the Fort Erie racetrack and the govn’t has had to deal with extortion negotiations by Nordic ever since.
It is time for the govn’t to pony up and help resolve this ongoing problem with foreign ownership of a Canadian historic landmark/operation,
that the entire town of Fort Erie depends on!
It is simple to say they made a deal with the devil and it has now reached the time of deal or die!