At Hollywood Park, shine of opening day has long faded

Hollywood Park opened its 71st spring/summer meeting on a blustery Wednesday. It wasn’t hard to see which way the wind was blowing.

These are not salad days for horse racing. This place, and day, used to attract the beautiful people of Los Angeles. It meant Hollywood stars at Hollywood Park. There were more limos than jockeys. Photographers aimed at people in the seats as much as horses on the track.

Wednesday featured eight races and thousands of empty seats. The Turf Club looked like a restaurant after closing time. What was once a day for the public has become just another day for the hard-cores.

The men in charge of holding things together sat in the Turf Club. Jack Liebau is president, Eual Wyatt general manager. Liebau, in particular, is a target of criticism in racing circles as the face of Bay Meadows Land Company, which took ownership of the track in 2005 from Churchill Downs. Churchill made a tidy profit, then cashed out, whining on exit that California hadn’t given it the slot machines needed to make more.

Bay Meadows took over, guaranteed it would keep the track open at least three years before it started exploring real estate opportunities, and somewhat agreed with Churchill that racing’s business model is broken.

Liebau was left to be the visible caretaker, entrusted to keep the doors open until wrecking balls arrive. He understands, and resents, that label.

“My mandate is to keep this track operating indefinitely,” he says. “I have nothing to do with the real estate arm of the company.”

Nor, he says, does corporate headquarters impose operating procedures on him designed to cut track efficiency, leading to a close.

“They don’t say boo to me,” Liebau says.

Liebau, a Stanford-educated lawyer, horse owner and, for two years, president of Santa Anita, sees Hollywood Park’s woes as reflective of the industry.

“Everybody is in the same shape,” he says. “We used to think we were recession proof. So did Vegas.”

This meeting will include five-day-a-week racing, Wednesday through Sunday with the exception of six Thursdays. It will have just one large stakes purse, the $500,000 Hollywood Gold Cup, a legendary race that once had a purse of $1 million. Last year’s stakes money was $6.08 million; this year it’s $4.6 million. Liebau and Wyatt say this allows them to keep decent purses and fields for claiming races that keep more people employed.

Wednesday’s attendance was 3,487. Last year‘s was 4,043, the year before that 4,472. As recently as 2001, opening-day attendance was 23,609. Before satellite wagering began in the late 1980s, opening-day averages were around 30,000.

The track benefits greatly from having dates during the Triple Crown season, when there is plenty of simulcast betting. Friday night racing does well here, too, especially with its accompanying concert series. Joan Jett will star this Friday.

“We’re trying,” Wyatt says.

Succeeding would be nicer.

But for now, Hollywood Park, once the place to be, is someplace that used to be.

bill.dwyre@latimes.com