This Time, She Doesn’t Mind Change

Marje Everett, ousted as the head of Hollywood Park when R.D. Hubbard took over in 1990, welcomed the arrival of Churchill Downs as the new owner of the Inglewood track, while remaining deeply critical of the Hubbard regime.

Everett, a veteran racing executive in Chicago--her father owned Arlington Park--by the time she arrived at Hollywood Park in 1970, is still a Hollywood Park shareholder.

“Tom Meeker will move Hollywood Park way up,” Everett said Thursday, referring to the president of Churchill Downs. “We’re lucky to have both Meeker and Frank Stronach running these tracks now. Stronach can do wonders with Santa Anita and so can Meeker at Hollywood. Their presence is bound to increase the quality of management at both tracks.”

Everett said she never took a salary from Hollywood Park or charged the track for her expenses.

“Hubbard paid himself well,” she said. “Any change from him would be an improvement. Besides his salary, he had a big expense account, stock options and a lot of other fringe benefits. The board offered me a--what do they call it?--a golden parachute when I left. Quite a nice package. But I turned it down.”

Hubbard smiled when he was told about Everett’s remarks. He said his annual salary at Hollywood Park is $500,000.

“Believe me, the next top guy in here will be paid a hell of a lot more than that,” he added.

Ironically, Everett said, she was once invited into a plan by Louis Wolfson, then a Hollywood Park shareholder and the man who raced Affirmed, the 1978 Triple Crown champion, to buy Churchill Downs.

“That wasn’t for me,” Everett said.

Noting that Hollywood Park’s stock has improved lately, Everett said:

“It’s about time. It’s tragic what Hubbard has done to the shareholders. He got rid of the real estate investment trust [structured to excuse companies from paying corporate income taxes], he brought in the casino and he did things that Hollywood Park wasn’t intended to be.”

Jack Liebau, president of Bay Meadows Race Course near San Francisco, said he thought Hubbard had done a good job.

“From a personal standpoint, I’m disappointed that he’s leaving,” Liebau said. “He was very positive for the game, very innovative. One of the things he did was bring in Friday night racing. We had done it before him [and so had Everett], but I thought Dee took it to a new level, getting younger people to the track.”

Churchill Downs’ twin spires have become tentacles, gobbling up racetracks and now invading the West Coast. Liebau sees that as a sign of the times. Bay Meadows was also sold recently.

“Consolidation is what we have everywhere,” he said. “I just hope the industry can prosper. It used to be that your business was regional, and your bread and butter was what you did locally. Now we’re sending our [race] signal out to 500 or 600 places a day.”

Liebau believes there will always be room for small tracks.

“I can’t see there being five or six super-tracks and nothing else,” he said. “There are too many slow horses around, and their owners will always want to run them somewhere.”