Magna’s Sell-Off Continues

Magna Entertainment Corp., owner of Santa Anita, Gulfstream Park and several other tracks, is selling the Meadows, a harness-track in the Pittsburgh suburbs, for $225 million.

The sale of the Meadows was announced as Magna’s third-quarter report showed that the Canadian-based company had lost $34.5 million, compared to a deficit of $50.3 million for the same three months a year ago. Magna’s losses since 2002 have been almost $280 million.

Had Magna kept the Meadows, its chief executive, Thomas Hodgson, estimated that the company would have had to spend half a billion dollars to get into the casino business at the track. The buyers, who also get five off-track betting parlors in Western Pennsylvania, are Millennium Gaming and Oaktree Capital Management. Oaktree Capital is not connected to the Oak Tree Racing Assn., which runs an annual race meet at Santa Anita.

Magna, which has a five-year management deal to continue running the Meadows, at a fee of between $1 million and $2 million a year, has raised about $119 million by selling Florida land, a harness track in Canada and a management company that operated Colonial Downs in Virginia. Its California tracks, Santa Anita and Golden Gate Fields in Albany, are still hopeful of adding casino gaming.

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Taste Of Paradise, who finished second in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, has been retired to stud because of an injury to his left foreleg.... Fraise, winner of the Breeders’ Cup Turf in 1992, died after suffering a ruptured blood vessel.

-- Bill Christine