Santa Anita Close to Selling Interest in Troubled Minnesota Race Track

New Jersey investor John Aglialoro has agreed to purchase the financially troubled Canterbury Downs race track, which is partly owned by Santa Anita of Arcadia, Calif., according to Aglialoro’s attorney.

“There is substantive agreement on everything,” Bloomington lawyer John Broeker, who represents Aglialoro, said Monday. “We’re still working on some of the language to the agreement. It’s significant, but it’s not a deal-breaking thing.”

Broeker said there was no snag in the negotiations and that minor details of the agreement should be worked out and the deal completed today.

“We’re basically talking about language that needs to be clarified, not concepts,” he said. “Everything I’m aware of, I have John’s go-ahead to authorize.”

Canterbury President Michael Manning also said he expected the deal to be completed today.

The deal for the Shakopee track, which has lost millions of dollars since opening in 1985, might have been finished on Monday but for nationwide long-distance switching problems suffered by American Telephone & Telegraph.

“You can blame that (the failure to finish the deal on Monday) on AT&T;,” Broeker said. “We couldn’t get through to the West Coast or to New Jersey with our fax machines and we decided to wait until (today) to complete the transaction.”

Aglialoro has been negotiating with Brooks Fields Jr. and his nephew Brooks Hauser, who own 61% of Canterbury’s equity stock, and Santa Anita, which owns the other 39%.

He reached agreement with Fields and Hauser over the weekend and on Monday with Santa Anita. The sale price for Canterbury’s stock was not disclosed.

“Everything is very favorable to a deal,” said Royce McKinley, a Santa Anita executive and member of Canterbury’s board of directors. “We have agreed on all the major provisions.”

McKinley said the agreement calls for Santa Anita to turn over its 39% ownership in Canterbury and give up a long-term management contract.

“The management contract will be terminated,” said McKinley. “John Aglialoro wants to bring in his own management team. We certainly will cooperate and help him in any way we can to make Canterbury a success.”

If the stock sale is completed, Aglialoro then must negotiate for the track’s mortgage with the banks, or with Michigan investors Bernie Hartman and Herbert Tyner, who hold an option to buy the $45 million debt for an estimated $12 million.

“He does not expect to show a profit this year, or next year,” Broeker said. “He knows there is a lot of work ahead to rebuild Canterbury’s image with the public and with horsemen. He also hopes to obtain the necessary credibility with the public and the press, probably much more than people are used to seeing from Canterbury in the past.

“The goal will be to make racing better than it has been--and it has not been bad here--as well as help racing and the track reach their true potential here.”

Aglialoro is president of United Medical Corp., a Haddonfield, N.J.-based medical supplies company with 650 employees.

Although he has no previous investments in race tracks, Aglialoro is a thoroughbred horse owner who successfully owned the Equus Farm breeding farm in Ocala, Fla., from 1981 to ’88. He also has owned small racing stables in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Florida since 1981.