End Near for Boston Racetrack

A day at the races here is more like an Irish wake than a sporting event. Even hard-core bettors can’t generate much interest in the rock-bottom claiming horses who fill most of the events at Suffolk Downs nowadays. Instead they mourn the imminent demise of their hometown racetrack and curse the man they say is responsible for killing it.

Horseplayers, horsemen and track employees all dread the approach of Dec. 31, the day Suffolk may shut down permanently. They hope for salvation but they fear the worst, and they are preoccupied by those fears. “The first thing I do about in the morning, and the last thing I do at night,” said Ronald Dandy, one of the leading trainers here, “is wonder if I’m going to be here next year.”

There is nothing unusual about the death of a racetrack, of course. Two other tracks that used to be part of a thriving New England circuit, Narragansett Park and Lincoln Downs, ceased their thoroughbred operations because they were no longer economically viable. But that is not the case with Suffolk.

The Ladbroke Group, the famous English bookmaking firm, says it is prepared to make a $100 million investment in Massachusetts racing -- leasing Suffolk, building a new track and developing a statewide off-track betting system. And plenty of others have recognized the possibilities here, too.

The late Frank DeFrancis spent much of his last year looking to acquire a new racetrack, in addition to Laurel and Pimlico, and, of all the tracks in the country, one golden opportunity stood out: Suffolk Downs.

Even though the track had been run into the ground by years of bad management, it still retained a hard core of customers and an able group of horsemen. Because Boston has a large blue-collar population that loves to gamble, the potential for growth was enormous.

But DeFrancis’s efforts came to naught. His son Joe said, “The owner of the track seemed to have no intention whatsoever in selling at a reasonable price or leasing it for racing.”

The owner, Buddy LeRoux, bought Suffolk Downs in 1986 for $22 million and immediately faced numerous challenges. The track’s physical facilities were in need of repair. Competition from two dog tracks was formidable. And the worst problem of all was traffic; a turf writer who lives 30 miles from the track says the drive takes him 1 3/4 hours each way. But what attracted LeRoux to Suffolk was the 200 acres of land on which it was sitting.

“Buddy saw this as a real-estate venture in conjunction with racing,” said George Sullivan, vice president for communications for LeRoux, who does not comment to the press. “You don’t need 200 acres for a racetrack. What do you need, half of it?”

LeRoux, however, never displayed much interest in Suffolk’s potential as a racetrack; he announced in 1987 that he was going to close Suffolk, prompting the state legislature to strike a deal with him. The state would give a substantial chunk of its tax revenue from wagering back to Suffolk, in exchange for LeRoux’s agreement to keep the track open for two years -- through Dec. 31, 1989. But Sullivan says that “even with that reduced takeout, we’ve lost $4 million in our 3 1/2 years of ownership.”

In the view of his critics, LeRoux is doing what the owners of Roosevelt Raceway did to that once-great harness track: Buy a track on a valuable property; let the business deteriorate; cite the financial losses; use those losses as a justification for closing the track; then reap the real estate benefits.

The racing community in Boston is unanimous in the view that LeRoux is responsible for Suffolk’s decline. The Boston Globe wrote last week: “LeRoux has never had a clue about how to run Suffolk. ... There is no policy. There is no plan. There is no exercise of intelligence. There is no leadership. ... The level of incompetence that ownership has reached at the East Boston oval is incomprehensible.” And that is one of the milder critiques of LeRoux’s management.

If Suffolk has any hope for survival, it lies with Ladbroke. The huge conglomerate is interested in developing off-track betting systems in America, and it would build a new track in the Boston area if it got OTB to go along with it. In the interim it could lease Suffolk from LeRoux. This might even make sense for LeRoux, since the state is unlikely to permit development of the Suffolk property until traffic problems in the area are eased -- and that may take a decade.

As logical as this scenario may be, it is not likely to happen. Ladbroke got a cool reception when it made its initial pitch for OTB to the state legislature. (Massachusetts politicians might want to maintain control over OTB, instead of turning it over to outsiders, so that all of their cousins can be assured of jobs.)

Moreover, LeRoux has not yet shown any serious intentions of leasing Suffolk. He says that the track’s property is worth $175 million, and his inflated view of its value might lead him to reject any offers to lease it, no matter how reasonable they may be. He has the power to kill racing in Massachusetts singlehandedly, and most people here believe he is going to exercise it.