JC / Railbird

Suffolk Downs Archive

Developing Suffolk

There have been ominous rumblings about the future of Suffolk Downs in the local press recently — an article hinting at the possibility of more commercial development on land owned by the track appeared in the Boston Globe two weeks ago and a couple of stories in the Herald have mentioned the Celtics are considering Suffolk as a site for their new arena — but nothing so alarming as what the Globe reported this morning:
“Steven Roth, the tough, entrepreneurial chief executive of giant Vornado Realty Trust, has his sights set on Boston’s Suffolk Downs. And it is a better bet than any you could place at the struggling track that the opportunity he sees is not in a bunch of old men shouting at a TV screen and betting two bucks on a race at Aqueduct.
“Suffolk Downs is a dying business, and has been for years. But make no mistake: There is value there, and the smart money is lining up.
“Vornado, a New York real estate investment trust with a market value of $9 billion, has launched a tender offer seeking to buy the shares of Suffolk Downs’s constantly warring stockholders.”
Live racing is scheduled to begin in April, and as a New England racing fan, I hope it’s not the last year. If Suffolk Downs is sold for development, it effectively means the end of the sport not just in Boston, but in the region.

Posted in Suffolk Downs on January 14, 2005

One Race

Call Me Mr. Vain was the winningest horse in North America in 2003 with 11 wins; he spent most of 2004 in his stall, recovering from a tendon injury. His owner/trainer called me this afternoon to let me know that Mr. Vain was running in the third at Charles Town tonight and that he was going to “run big.” I was skeptical — it’s a rare trainer who doesn’t think his horse will win every time it goes out — but a look at the third race, which was one of those messy cheap claiming affairs in which a lot of horses don’t make much sense, showed that Mr. Vain was easily one of the contenders, and so my racing companion and I ventured out to East Boston, arriving in time for the second race at Charles Town.

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Posted in Suffolk Downs on January 13, 2005

Struggling Suffolk

May “be forced” to develop more land. This is just the sort of article that stirs up a New England racing fan’s anxiety, even if it’s no more than a reminder of Suffolk Downs’ precarious situation and reports little new information. (Boston Globe)

Posted in Suffolk Downs on January 4, 2005