Tunnel Nearly Complete for Del Mar Race Season

A 660-foot-long tunnel linking the grandstand and the Del Mar Race Track infield is nearing completion and will be finished about June 1, in time for the 42-day racing season.

The $1.2-million underground route will allow about 3,000 race fans to use the infield park facilities being built. Picnic tables, betting windows and refreshment stands will be available to the infield racing patrons. What will not be available is trackside seating.

Infield spectators “can watch the races from the rail,” the fair’s general manager, Roger Vitaich, said. Bleachers or permanent seating on risers would block the grandstand view of the horses on the backstretch, he said.

Del Mar Fair Board officials tried for several years to convince the state Coastal Commission that a tunnel should be built.

In a final successful effort, the fair officials agreed to set aside a 16-acre nesting area for least terns on land reserved for fairgrounds parking in return for permission to build the tunnel.

However, the tunnel project was shelved in 1982 because the Del Mar Fair Board was faced with a boycott threat by thoroughbred owners who demanded improved housing for horses and horsemen at the Del Mar track. The board voted $2.3 million to build additional horse barns and housing on the backstretch instead of going ahead with the tunnel.

Vitaich said that, although the tunnel will be completed, it will not be open during the fair, which begins June 20. Racing patrons attending the 1985 racing meet July 24 to Sept. 11 will be the first to use the two-block-long tunnel, which stretches from the western end of the grandstand, under the dirt-and-turf tracks, to the infield.

Vitaich said the “parklike setting” is expected to attract families and others seeking a different view of the horse races.

A frequently asked question about the tunnel, Vitaich said, is what keeps the water from filling it during the rainy season. The answer, he said, is pumps.