Still Flamingo Dancing : Operator at Hialeah Sees Track Coming Out on Top in Florida Date War, Ahead of Gulfstream and Calder, When Legislature Approves a Racing Calendar

Florida racing is at the crisis stage again and, improbably enough, the track operator with the apparent upper hand is John Brunetti, who has played the underdog’s role for more than adecade.

Brunetti recently sat smiling in his office at Hialeah, the prettiest and most legendary of South Florida’s three thoroughbred tracks. The war over racing dates is still being fought--running during Florida’s high tourist season, from January through March, is a prerequisite for a track to do the most business--and although the state legislature up in Tallahassee is divided, as usual, Brunetti senses that Hialeah’s time has come.

A few minutes into the interview, Brunetti says that he is reading “Rising Sun,” Michael Crichton’s novel that turns on the rise of Japan and the decline of America.

“One of the points in the book is that the Japanese won’t buy if somebody else doesn’t sell,” Brunetti said.

His point is obvious. Last December, Bert Firestone, deep in debt and carrying unrealistic mortgages on Gulfstream Park and Calder Race Course, the other major tracks in the Miami area, gave up and the properties went back to Japanese conglomerates that had lent him money.

Gulfstream is now owned by the Orient Corp., a diversified company that is the fifth-largest on the Tokyo stock exchange and lists its assets at more than $48 billion. Calder belongs to Kawasaki Leasing International Inc. Firestone was unable to keep up a $90-million loan that enabled him to buy Calder and an $80-million loan that came with his acquisition of Gulfstream.

The transfer of the ownerships to the Japanese was railroaded by Florida state racing authorities because lengthy background checks would have resulted in a suspension of racing at Gulfstream, which will be the site for the $10-million Breeders’ Cup races Oct. 31.

But since Firestone’s departure, Robert Butterworth, the Florida attorney general, has suggested that executives from both companies might be linked to Japanese organized crime. Representatives for the Japanese have characterized Butterworth’s investigation as “politically motivated” and say that the attorney general is guilty of “outrageous innuendo.”

As the Florida state legislature’s 60-day session ground to a halt recently, much business was left undone, including action on a parimutuel wagering bill. The bill includes an amendment that would bar foreign ownership of race tracks; it would force the Japanese to sell their track holdings within three months. But because neither Gulfstream nor Calder has prospered in recent years, there would not be a plethora of American buyers eager to step in.

“The attorney general’s position and his motivation should be investigated,” wrote Gene Stevens, publisher of a racing publication called Post Time USA. “The Japanese spent about $186 million to purchase two tracks, and already they might not be worth half that investment.”

Not far from Gulfstream, about 25 miles northeast of Hialeah, the rambling beach-front hotel that was the headquarters for the 1989 Breeders’ Cup has gone out of business. Across the street from the hotel, on a small marquee, is a sign that reads: “BUY AMERICAN.”

The Japanese might wonder if their excursion into racing is really worth all the fuss. Gulfstream is worth more as real estate, and horsemen here would not be surprised if its owners rushed into non-racing development as soon as the Florida market turns around.

These are the same horsemen who staged an unofficial one-day boycott this month, entering so few horses that racing couldn’t be conducted. The disruption cost the state about $65,000 in taxes on bets that would have been made, and horse owners missed out on $175,000 in purses.

The horsemen’s concerns included a proposal that would have given them half as much in purse money from betting on their races at greyhound tracks and jai alai frontons. These are new venues for off-track thoroughbred betting in Florida, which is already saturated with gambling. The thoroughbreds are inundated with day-and-night competition from the greyhounds, harness racing, jai alai and a state lottery, and bills that will be considered in special sessions of the state legislature next week include legalization of video lottery games and, most threatening of all to the horse tracks, sports betting.

Gov. Lawton Chiles has said that he is opposed to sports betting, but track operators are still nervous, and casino gambling could be on the horizon.

The legislators’ racing priority during these special sessions is the rewriting of the state’s parimutuel law, which expires on July 1.

Deregulation didn’t work regarding racing dates, with the three tracks unable to agree, and the lawmakers couldn’t hammer out a calendar, either. The plan left on the table--and one that Brunetti believes Hialeah still get--calls for an expanded season of 108 days at his track. Gulfstream would get 67 prime days, from mid-January through March; and Calder, which has threatened a lawsuit if this calendar is approved, would have had its season chopped about 30% to 120 days.

If Calder were assigned a shortened schedule, it probably would close its backstretch during the off-season, and trainers stabling there year-round would have to seek barn space elsewhere.

Earlier this week, Gulfstream applied for those prime dates, and Calder and Hialeah asked for dates that would have them running at the same time.

The Japanese have allowed veteran racing executives to continue operating their tracks, Ken Dunn at Calder and Doug Donn at Gulfstream Park. Donn and his relatives, some of whom were uninterested in continuing a track that the late James Donn had acquired in the 1940s, sold Gulfstream to Firestone in 1990.

Doug Donn rejects a theory by Brunetti that the Japanese lent Firestone money to buy Gulfstream and Calder, knowing that he was in over his head and would have to return the property to his lenders.

“Brunetti said that at the time the sale was being reviewed by the state, and I guess he’s still saying it,” Donn said. “I speak only for the Orient company, but why would they concoct some kind of a plan like that where their profits will be less running the track than if Firestone had continued paying on the loan? They had no intention of doing that when they gave Firestone his financing.”

On the door to Brunetti’s office is a sign that says, “The Captain.” On the nameplate at the front of his desk, it reads: “One Man Show.”

Firestone and Brunetti attended military school together in New York in the 1950s. Brunetti, 60, was born in Brooklyn, used to sneak into the races at Garden State Park in New Jersey when he was a teen-ager and spent as much time at Hialeah as he did in the classroom when he was an undergraduate at the University of Miami. He and his father were in the construction business, and when Hialeah’s shareholders, a group headed by John Galbreath, owner of Darby Dan Farm and the Pittsburgh Pirates, wanted to sell in the 1970s, Brunetti began buying up stock.

He is in the middle of a 30-year lease with the City of Hialeah, which owns the 220 acres. A recent story in Thoroughbred Racing Action ranked Hialeah the second-most beautiful track in America, behind Santa Anita.

According to Brunetti, the principal on his original loan of $9 million at 6% has shrunk to less than $6 million. At the end of the lease, he can pay the city the loan balance, plus $100, and he owns the place--the bougainvillea, the 10,000 palm trees, the magnificent buildings with their Mediterranean architecture, the 800 flamingos that inhabit the 18-acre lake in the track’s infield and one of the kindest surfaces in the country for horses to run on.

Miami newspaperman Jack Bell once said, “It is a place where you can forget a losing bet quicker than any place in the country.”

When it was suggested to Brunetti that he had the classic sweetheart lease, he smiled and said, “Good business is what I call it.”

Most of Hialeah’s market is Latino.

“About 80% of the 200,000 people in the city are Latin,” Brunetti said. “Just over half the people in the county are Latin. This is the base for our audience. If we get the dates that were proposed, we’ll stay open seven months a year for racing and, in the off-season, just for a day at the park.”

One of Brunetti’s homes is in La Costa. He races a few horses in California and is a frequent visitor during Del Mar’s summer season. A few years ago, he made a surprisingly strong bid with the state of California to obtain a 20-year lease to operate Del Mar. He says that he owns about 5% of the stock in Hollywood Park and is disappointed that R.D. Hubbard, the track’s chairman, has not found a spot for him on the board of directors.

Asked about Brunetti’s being on the Hollywood board, Hubbard had no comment.

“Ask him about the flamingos,” Hubbard said.

The flamingos?

“Yeah, the flamingos,” Hubbard said. “He promised us 40 flamingos for the infield at Hollywood Park. When’s he sending them?”