THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 29, 1996 TAG: 9607290036
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVID M. POOLE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WILLOW PARK, TEXAS LENGTH: 177 lines
As quarter horses burst from the starting gate at Trinity Meadows Raceway, track regular Alan Ettinger never glances up from his Daily Racing Form.
Ettinger is too busy handicapping thoroughbred races in New York and Illinois - simulcast on a bank of video monitors - to concern himself with the horses and jockeys thundering toward the finish line a few hundred feet away.
``I haven't bet Trinity Meadows horses in two years,'' says Ettinger, a podiatrist from nearby Fort Worth. ``They are cheaper horses. The races are too unpredictable.''
Emphasizing simulcasts at the expense of live racing is how Arnold Stansley and his partners squeeze a profit from Trinity Meadows, a converted training track on the western fringe of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan sprawl.
In Virginia, some horse owners and trainers worry that Stansley will bring the same lean approach to the proposed Colonial Downs track in New Kent County, between Williamsburg and Richmond.
Critics note that Stansley has backed off promises he made when he won the state's first track license two years ago. He has eliminated an outer turf track designed to distinguish Colonial Downs from other venues and to evoke Virginia's steeple-chase tradition. He also scaled back his original commitment to live thoroughbred racing from 102 days to 30 days a year.
Stansley, whose main business is a harness track in Toledo, Ohio, said he remains committed to building a track worthy of Virginia's storied thoroughbred history.
``We're going to let our merits in Virginia speak for themselves,'' he said. ``We're working as partners with the horsemen.''
But owners and trainers are split between those who say a track is needed to boost the state's horse industry and those who would rather have no track than one that diminishes live racing.
``We've got to crawl before we can walk,'' said Reynolds Cowles, an Albemarle County veterinarian and breeder who is vice president of the Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association.
``Sure, we'd all love to have 200 days of live racing, but it doesn't work. The trend is toward short, quality meets.''
Others fear the 30-day thoroughbred meet will make Colonial Downs - like Trinity Meadows in Texas - more betting parlor than track, a shell enterprise that will give Stansley and his partners the lucrative rights to offer simulcast wagering at six year-round, off-track facilities around the state.
``They are talking about 30,000 simulcast races a year and only 300 live races a year. To rank-and-file horsemen, that seems outrageous,'' said Mike Pearson, a Northern Virginia trainer and breeder who sits on the Virginia HBPA board.
The Racing Commission remains confident that Stansley can deliver a ``world-class'' operation, especially now that Cleveland real estate developer Jeffrey P. Jacobs has bought a 50 percent stake in the venture.
Jacobs, whose father owns the Cleveland Indians baseball team, made a name for himself by transforming a Cleveland warehouse district, known as The Flats, into a thriving commercial and entertainment district.
Jacobs brings a major league cachet to the project. Tall and confident, he flashes a diamond-encrusted Indians ring on his right hand and frequently drops his baseball lineage.
When asked about some horsemen's fears that Stansley will run a bush-league track at Colonial Downs, Jacobs replied, referring to the home of the Indians, ``Have you ever seen Jacobs Field? It's a first-class facility.''
Horsemen base their concerns about Stansley on what they know about Trinity Meadows in Texas.
Don't go to Trinity Meadows looking for the grand spires of Kentucky's Churchill Downs or the terra cotta majesty of California's Del Mar. The parking lots are unpaved and, on a recent Saturday afternoon, the infield grass looked as if it hadn't been mowed for weeks. The grandstand is a metal pole building that would not look out of place in an industrial park.
Architecturally notable are the satellite dishes - nine of them - that beam in races from around the country. Simulcast races account for 80 cents of every dollar wagered at Trinity Meadows. (In his Virginia application, Stansley projected the simulcast-to-live ratio would be 75:25.)
Inside the Trinity Meadows grandstand, the lighting is provided by fluorescent tubes hanging from the exposed steel beams. Fans sit on plastic chairs, many of which are arranged so they face away from the track and toward banks of simulcast monitors.
Stansley said it would be misleading to compare the $10 million Texas track with the planned $34 million Colonial Downs in New Kent County.
The main grandstand will be finished with brick in a Colonial style befitting Virginia's thoroughbred tradition, Stansley said. ``It will be very upscale,'' he said.
Donald Price, executive director of the Virginia Racing Commission, said those who expect Colonial Downs to resemble a Taj Mahal ignore the recent history of horse tracks falling victim to lavish clubhouses and inflated projections.
``A pretty race track may not be what you want when you need a track to be viable,'' Price said. ``Colonial Downs will be a very nice facility. It's not going to be the Taj Mahal and then again it's not going to be the local dump.
``After all the negative things that have been said (about Trinity Meadows), it's still the only race track in Texas that is financially viable, and that in and of itself is an important issue.''
While other start-up tracks have gone bankrupt because of grandiose expectations, Trinity Meadows set its sights deliberately low when it opened in May 1991.
The owners' frugality is the stuff of legends in Texas.
Gamblers sweated through two hot summers before the management air conditioned the grandstand. There were no bathrooms in the stable area, so management installed portable toilets and charged trainers $3 a day to use them. The owners declined to pay for drainage improvements for animal runoff into the nearby Trinity River, earning them a $230,000 slap from the Environmental Protection Agency. The track surface was so poor that jockeys went on strike, saying the conditions threatened the safety of them and their mounts.
Trinity Meadows could afford to cut costs - it was the only game in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
``They'll be the first to admit that they treated their customers with contempt for the first four years,'' said Jim Cavasar, an insurance agent from nearby Mansfield who has been coming to the track since it opened.
``If a slop of gravy is five dollars, and they've got the only slop around, you're going to pay five dollars.''
When Trinity Meadows applied in 1992 to upgrade to a Class 1 track, the Texas Racing Commission staff went on record saying the owners were unqualified, based on their record of failing to comply with license requirements and racing regulations.
Earlier this year, Trinity Meadows added a restaurant to the second level and made some other improvements in response to competition from Lone Star, a $100 million track being built in the heart of the Dallas-Forth Worth area.
Track regulars say they appreciate the air conditioning and the new restaurant that offers more than chili dogs and nachos.
Some Texas horsemen say Trinity Meadows still has a long way to go.
``It's still not the model race track,'' said Jeff True, director of the Texas Quarter Horse Association. ``If you are ready to run a business like that, you have to be willing to put some money back into it, but they've just been taking money out of it.''
Supporters say Stansley cannot be blamed for the shortcomings at Trinity Meadows, noting he is a 9 percent investor with no role in the track's day-to-day management.
His family owns a one-third stake and is negotiating to buy a controlling interest. His brother-in-law - Jack Lenavitt, a trial attorney from Toledo, Ohio - is a managing partner. Stansley does own the company that runs the track's concessions. That company's share of the gross revenues from concessions last year was $1.6 million.
``I don't know if you can look at Trinity Meadows and see a lot of (Stansley's) fingerprints,'' said Jeff Hooper, executive director of the Texas Thoroughbred Association.
In Virginia, however, Stansley has portrayed himself as a major player at the Texas track.
The Virginia Racing Commission granted him the Colonial Downs license in part because of his ``proven record of success in the operation and management'' of Trinity Meadows.
Commission officials, who said they were aware that Stansley was simply an investor in Trinity Meadows, could not explain the reference to his management experience in Texas.
``I have no idea,'' Price said.
Some Virginia horsemen accuse the Racing Commission of letting Stansley have it both ways on Trinity Meadows - patting him on the back for the track's financial success, while letting him off the hook for management shortcomings.
``I wonder what our Racing Commission was using for criteria when they said he (Stansley) was a proven operator and used Trinity Meadows as an example,'' said Pearson, the trainer from Northern Virginia.
John Shenefield, chairman of the Virginia Racing Commission, dismissed Trinity Meadows as a ``red herring'' thrown up by horsemen upset with the commission for not awarding the state's first track license to Northern Virginia.
``There has been an unremitting hostile curtain of live fire directed at Arnold Stansley for two years,'' Shenefield said.
Shenefield said that all the charges and countercharges against Trinity Meadows - as well as the other applicants - came out during several days of public hearings in 1994.
Shenefield said he attached ``marginal relevance'' to criticism of Trinity Meadows, which he said may be a product of Texas horse politics.
``Trinity Meadows stands out among a lot of other tracks in that it wasn't bankrupt in its first year,'' he said. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photos]
ANDREW P. SCOTT photos
Sue Berry and Steve Soltis check tout sheets between races at
Trinity Meadows Raceway, on the western fringe of the Dallas-Fort
Worth metropolitan sprawl.
Operator's tie to a bare-bones Texas operation keyed to simulcasts
raises questions about Va.'s new venture.
Live races account for a fifth of the cash bet at Trinity Meadows.
The rest goes to televised races.
KEYWORDS: RACE TRACK HORSE RACING by CNB