RESURRECTED : Arlington Racecourse, Destroyed by Fire in 1985, Is Now Better Than Ever

Any race track that has a Sunday Silence sundae on its dining-room menu can’t be all bad.

But that $2.95 concoction, named after the Kentucky Derby winner and a combination of homemade ice cream smothered with a jillion calories, is only a small reason for liking Arlington International Racecourse, the rebuilt grande dame of Midwest racing in this northwest Chicago suburb.

There are bigger, and better, reasons for liking the new Arlington, which is the result of 19 months of construction and an estimated $175 million of owner Dick Duchossois’ money. The track opened 2 1/2 months ago, about four years after the original plant was destroyed by fire. The inaugural meeting will continue through Oct. 15.

It is difficult to find a fan or a horseman who will knock the place. Charlie Rose, an assistant to New York trainer John Veitch, has brought a couple of horses here.

“I had heard so many raves about the place that when I came here in July, I didn’t expect it to live up to all those notices,” Rose said. “But it did. It is just as good as everybody says it is.”

Jack Price, who owned and trained Carry Back when he won the Kentucky Derby in 1961, lives in Florida and is visiting a Chicago race track for the first time in 25 years.

“This place is like the Louvre,” Price said as he looked around. “Check that. It’s nicer than the Louvre.”

Responsibility for the new Arlington lies solely with Duchossois (dush-a-SWAH), a 68-year-old workaholic businessman whose company employs 8,500 people, makes railroad cars and automatic garage-door openers and has seven radio stations and a television station. Duchossois also owns Quad City Downs, a harness track, and races horses and operates Hill ‘n Dale Farm, a 400-acre estate where he stands Zev, Illinois’ most important stallion.

A newcomer to racing, Duchossois wasn’t interested in horses until one of his four children started riding saddlebreds in state competitions. In 1983, Duchossois and three partners paid $19 million to buy a deteriorating Arlington Park from Gulf & Western. Although Duchossois put up most of the money, he remained in the background while the others ran the track.

One of the partners, Joe Joyce, had worked for Gulf & Western and was largely responsible for starting the Arlington Million, thoroughbred racing’s first million-dollar race, in 1981. The Million was designed to give the ailing track a transfusion by importing top grass runners around the world to Chicago to run against America’s turf stars.

The Million was a moderate success for four years, failing to attract Europe’s best horses but turning into a personal showcase for John Henry, the charismatic gelding who won two of the races and finished second another time.

On July 30, 1985, 25 days before the fifth Million, Duchossois, a widower, attended a birthday party with Phyllis Diller, his good friend. When Duchossois returned home, he got a phone call from Joyce with news that there was a fire at the track. The fire continued the next day, wiping out the grandstand and most of the track offices.

Incredibly, Arlington was still able to run the Million, by removing the grandstand rubble and replacing it with tents and portable bleachers that gave the track a county fair atmosphere.

Insurance companies offered a settlement reported to be $60 million, and Duchossois used some of the money to buy out Joyce and the other partners, who say that financially they did better that way.

Duchossois went from a silent partner to a 100% owner who got involved in everything. The track operated on the same makeshift basis for two years, then closed last year while construction continued on the renamed Arlington International.

“I’ve always felt that when something bad happens, something good can come of it,” Duchossois said. “The most fitting thing of all was that the year we ran what we called the Miracle Million (1985), Teleprompter, an English horse owned by Lord Derby himself, won the race. Because of that, the whole world knew what Arlington accomplished on the heels of the fire. We took a tragedy and turned it into an international display of good will.”

Now, Duchossois has turned a setting out of Currier & Ives into a sleek, cosmopolitan racing facility that operators of Garden State Park and the Birmingham Turf Club wished they had settled for when their tracks were built in recent years. Both Garden State, near Philadelphia, and Birmingham, in Alabama, were extravagant examples of construction overkill, facilities that were too big, too opulent--and too expensive--for their market areas.

Arlington International may have cost a lot of money--and only Duchossois himself knows exactly what it cost--but in the mind of its builder, it is a realistically sized plant. When the Arlington Million was run for the ninth time on the Sunday before Labor Day, management actually worked at keeping the crowd down--to around 30,000--so that everybody would be comfortable.

“This isn’t California,” says Duchossois, who races horses with trainer Charlie Whittingham on the West Coast. “A big crowd for us on a Saturday is 20,000. We’ve got room to expand, but we don’t use our infield for spectators and what we’ve tried to do is build a facility where everybody can enjoy a day at the races.”

Duchossois is also attempting to lure new, younger fans to Arlington, which is the goal of tracks everywhere. There is a high-tech video area in the six-story plant where fans can punch up interviews with racing personalities explaining the intricacies of the sport. The same monitors also provide history lessons, flashing highlights from the careers of some of racing’s most famous horses. There are several picnic areas and the yellow and white tents, familiar holdovers from the post-fire years.

Despite the relative smallness of the plant, it is easy to see how the cost escalated, because Duchossois spent lavishly in many areas. Just outside the video center, one level down and overlooking the amphitheater paddock, is a life-size bronze depicting the finish of the first Million, in which John Henry and Bill Shoemaker nipped The Bart and Eddie Delahoussaye at the wire. The statue is called “Against All Odds,” which Duchossois says describes the resurgence of Arlington as well as the fairy-tale career of John Henry, a mean-spirited horse who passed from owner to owner before he started winning major races.

Among the things that impress Whittingham about Arlington are the sight lines. At many race tracks, one of the basics--seeing the horses run--can’t be taken for granted, but here there are 12,000 seats with unobstructed views. The cantilevered roofs at both ends of the grandstand have no vertical structural supports and actually resemble giant Concorde bookends.

Arlington may also lead the country’s tracks in television monitors per square foot. There are 800 monitors, with a TV set at most tables in the main dining room, as well as at many of the box seats. The running of each race is also accompanied by the best sound system in racing. A fan anywhere in the plant can hear every word of ebullient Phil Georgeff’s race call, and the volume is intentionally turned up when the horses hit the top of the stretch.

Have there been any complants?

Well, yes. Someone said that the hamburgers at the concession stands are overpriced. Still, they are less expensive than those sold at Saratoga. And some of the old guard would feel more comfortable being able to flick their cigar butts, but when the floors are marbled, carpeted or both, that’s not acceptable behavior.

“The place is so rich that I feel like taking my shoes off, so I won’t leave any footprints,” one bettor said.

To accommodate the high rollers and corporate groups, Arlington has built 19 sky boxes, unfurnished suites that accommodate a minimum of 20 people and rent for $60,000 a year with a three-year lease. One source said that the track has not been overwhelmed with applicants, but Duchossois said that he got enough response to almost rent each box twice.

“What we’ve decided to do is rent most of them on a daily basis, for parties,” Duchossois said. “It costs $1,000 a day for a group to use them.”

The early problems for Arlington International have been behind the scenes. The track is suing a large Chicago architectural firm for $20 million, charging that plans were submitted late, forcing the track to hire a general contractor without competitive bidding and causing cost overruns. In response, the architects say that Arlington is eight months late in paying the last $1 million of the $6.3-million fee.

The architects, who specialize in office buildings and museums, had no experience designing a race track. They were specifically selected because they would be open-minded with their ideas.

Duchossois, a decorated Army major during World War II, will not be an easy opponent in this legal battle, giving ground no more readily than he has in skirmishes with the racing commission, the state legislature and other Chicago tracks over racing dates, off-track betting territories and other matters.

People who work for Duchossois are used to the same 14-hour days he subjects himself to. Duchossois says he can’t remember the last time he took a vacation.

Arlington’s employees must follow rules that are highly unusual for race track personnel. Betting during working hours is verboten, and mutuel clerks won’t punch out a ticket if they recognize a fellow employee across the counter.

“After this weekend, a lot of my people are going to get a week off,” Duchossois said before the Million. “They’ve been working under a lot of pressure, first in the rush to get ready for the opening, and then getting set for the Million.”

The owner of Arlington didn’t mention a respite for himself. In fact, he scheduled a vacation for November, then canceled it.