Beating the Odds : The owner of Los Alamitos Race Course is betting millions that his track can succeed amid a nationwide decline in horse racing and competition from other gaming outlets.

Edward C. Allred goes to Los Alamitos Race Course in Cypress almost every night,sitting in a private lounge five floors above the dirt track that first captivated him 37 years ago when he was a penniless college student.

Horse player, breeder and co-owner of Los Alamitos, Allred is the racetrack’s biggest fan--and its guardian angel.

With his personal fortune, Allred has kept alive Orange County’s only horse track during racing’s long, bumpy ride. In return, Los Alamitos has provided the reclusive Allred, a medical doctor, a place to race his 400 quarter horses and a retreat from his other, no less risky but profitable business: Family Planning Associates Medical Group, a large provider of abortions.

Now, even as horse ovals around the country continue to close under an avalanche of competing gambling outlets, Allred, 59, is making his biggest wager on the track. He is buying out two partners who control the remaining 50% of Los Alamitos and pouring $4 million into a white-tablecloth restaurant and lounge in the track’s aging grandstands.

The Vessels Club, named after the family that launched Los Alamitos in 1951, is expected to open later this fall. Allred hopes it will draw upscale, corporate customers as well as serve as a social center for horse owners and their families and friends.

“If a man owns horses and he can’t bring his wife here to a nice place to eat and a clean bathroom, she’s probably going to beat up on him,” says Allred, a big, affable man whose face lights up like a child’s when he watches the horses run.

“We think there’s demand” for the Vessels Club, Allred adds, noting that it will be mostly nonsmoking. “Whether it’s worth $4 million, we don’t know. . . . We’re not expecting miracles.”

Neither is anybody else. The racing industry nationwide has been in a slump for decades, and it has worsened in recent years with the spread of casinos, state lotteries and a plethora of entertainment alternatives.

Another major problem is that racing patrons literally are dying off and new ones aren’t replacing them. “There are entry barriers,” says I. Nelson Rose, a professor at Whittier Law School and an authority on gambling. “It costs money, it takes time to get there and you have to learn to handicap.”

At Los Alamitos, average daily attendance has fallen to about 7,000 from a peak of 9,000 in the early 1970s, though the decline is actually sharper if the track excludes those who come to Los Alamitos to bet solely on televised races from other tracks.

It has been doubly hard for Los Alamitos because it mainly runs quarter horses, which are less popular than thoroughbreds. Los Alamitos also is surrounded by three of the nation’s premier thoroughbred tracks in Santa Anita, Hollywood Park and Del Mar, all of which are refurbishing or adding side attractions to boost their sagging attendance. Hollywood Park, for example, last year opened a card club casino next to the track.

Technology also has changed racing dramatically.

Through satellite broadcasts, more fans at Los Alamitos are watching television monitors and betting on races from other tracks, and more money bet on Los Alamitos races is coming from bettors at off-track outlets.

Last year, bettors plopped down on average $1.1 million a night on live races at Los Alamitos--about the same as in 1980 when there was no satellite wagering. But nearly two-thirds of the money wagered last year on Los Alamitos races was made in betting parlors in places such as Northern California and Las Vegas, which get a cut from Los Alamitos.

Satellite wagering also means fans in Los Alamitos can bet on races from Nebraska to Hong Kong. The Hong Kong races run until 2:30 a.m., but there’s a good turnout for it, especially among Asian Americans, says Dick Feinberg, general manager at Los Alamitos.

“You can see how excited people get in here watching TV,” Feinberg says, pointing to throngs standing in front of monitors showing a dizzying selection of races every 15 minutes from around the nation. “It’s amazing.”

But while off-track wagering has increased the menu and convenience for bettors, it hasn’t helped the attendance for live racing at Los Alamitos. More and more, bettors are going to Los Alamitos to wager on off-track races, not the live racing portion.

Los Alamitos collects 9 cents of every dollar bet by its fans on live races at the track. But that cut shrinks to as little as 2 cents on the dollar on satellite races because of commissions to other tracks. (Overall, 80 to 84 cents of a dollar wagered on all races is returned to bettors. A portion of the remainder goes to purses to pay winning horse owners and to state taxes.)

Even so, Los Alamitos makes money during the day as a satellite wagering facility but struggles at night with live racing. The reason: It doesn’t generate enough patrons to pay the hefty expense of running races, which includes everything from paying horse owners, crews to start and clock races, and equipment to take care of the five-eighths of a mile track.

Allred says satellite wagering at Los Alamitos has been earning a profit of $2 million a year. But he acknowledges that he has lost so much money in live racing that over the past five years, the track as a whole has been only “marginally profitable” for him.

Given those numbers, Allred has thought about operating the track solely as a satellite wagering facility. But even if he wanted to, he couldn’t; state law requires tracks like his to have live racing if it wants satellite wagering.

Despite past troubles, Allred sees better days ahead. Last year, for the first time, Allred says he made a profit on the live quarter-horse racing meet--he estimates about $100,000.

But that’s a paltry amount when set against the $16.5 million that Allred invested in 1990 to buy his share of the track. By the end of this summer, he’ll have put up another $14 million to acquire the remaining 50% from two Northern California businessmen who have grown weary of the sport and business.

One of the partners, Chris Bardis of Sacramento, says Los Alamitos wasn’t as profitable as he had hoped. Bardis, 59, whose main business is home building, was an enthusiast of harness racing, which Los Alamitos runs about 14 weeks a year.

“I’m really tired of racing. I really don’t need the headaches,” Bardis said.

It’s different for Allred, Bardis added. “He loves what he’s doing.”

Allred, who grew up poor with an alcoholic stepfather, never finished law school. Instead he enrolled at Loma Linda University School of Medicine.

In the late 1960s, he founded Family Planning Associates, now a 600-employee company that includes doctors, hospitals and surgical centers. It is the largest provider of abortions in the California.

Over the years, he and his clinics have been targets of anti-abortion protesters, which explains why Allred guards his privacy. This year he moved from his longtime home in Long Beach to south Orange County, though he wouldn’t be more specific.

Allred doesn’t like talking about his medical practice. But he doesn’t cower either: “It’s been a good business,” he says firmly. “I believe in it. I’m committed to it, and I’m not going to back off because some people don’t like it.”

Allred’s biggest fear is casinos, which are on the increase nationwide. Whether in riverboats or on Native American reservations, casinos have devastated horse tracks around the nation.

“You put a casino near a racetrack, and immediately you lose 25% of the business,” observes Rose, the Whittier law professor.

Such concerns are why Allred and his partners at Los Alamitos tried two years ago to build their own casino-like card club next to the track. But voters in Cypress soundly rejected that proposal. Allred, still stung from that defeat, says he has abandoned the plan.

In the end, though, it’s the racing fans who will decide--fans such as Tom Rogers and Eddie Tsuruta.

Rogers and Tsuruta, both 57, have been coming to Los Alamitos together every Saturday for five years. They represent the core bettors at the track; they are older and bet $200 to $300 each a night.

Sitting in the track’s newly refurnished Garden Room, Rogers says he’s pleased with what’s happened at Los Alamitos in recent years. “It’s been improving constantly,” says the Rowland Heights resident. “There are more TVs, the tables and chairs are new. . . . Everything’s much better.”

Tsuruta studies the Racing Form, wearing thick glasses and a T-shirt that displays the colors and words of Foxwoods Casino, a popular Native American casino on the East Coast. Tsuruta, who lives in Hacienda Heights, loves the action at Los Alamitos. Last year, he says he won $25,000 on a $2 ticket.

“Would I still come here if there was a casino nearby?” he asks aloud. After a long pause, he answers: “It’s a tough question.”

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Know Your Breeds

Three major breeds race at Los Alamitos:

* Quarter horse: Mixed breed, bred to race shorter distances (300 to 870 yards).

* Thoroughbred: Pure bloodline with lineage traceable to ancient England. Bred for longer distances ( 1/2-2 miles).

* Standardbred: Trotting horse for harness racing evolved from Morgan and thoroughbred lines. Driver rides behind in a sulky or one-man cart. Further categorized as trotter or pacer, depending on gait.

Source: Los Alamitos Race Course; Researched by JANICE L. JONES / Los Angeles Times

Where the Money Goes

The split of money wagered at Los Alamitos varies. Straight bets return more to bettors than exotic bets and the track gets more for bets made at the track than at remote facilities. How a $1 straight bet breaks down at the track:

Bettors: $0.84

Track: $0.09

Purse: $0.06

State taxes: $0.01

Source: Los Alamitos Race Course; Researched by JANICE L. JONES / Los Angeles Times

Profile: Dr. Edward C. Allred

* Age: 59

* Education: B.A., history and biology, La Sierra College, 1959; M.D., Loma Linda University School of Medicine, 1964

* Medical career: Interned at Pasadena’s Huntington Memorial Hospital, 1964-1965; entered private medical practice upon discharge from Army Medical Corps, 1967; founder and medical director, Family Planning Associates Medical Group, 1967 to present

* Racing background: President/CEO and co-owner, Los Alamitos Racecourse, 1990 to present; board of directors, Horsemen’s Quarter Horse Racing Assn., 1971 to present

* Hobbies: Horse breeding and racing, golf

Source: Edward C. Allred; Researched by JANICE L. JONES / Los Angeles Times