This is the eleventh of a major series of articles concerning racetracks in the USA. We continue our review of USA racetracks with an initial look at the live racing and closed tracks of Massachusetts.
Massachusetts –
Plainridge Park (Casino)
The only surviving harness racing track in Massachusetts located in Plainville with a five eighths mile euro style oval with spiral turns is named Plainridge Park. The track which opened for simulcast racing on 17 March 1999 and live racing on 19 April the same year. With a track surface consisting of a gravel base, stone dust composition and a stone dust screening top layer, it has a 430ft straight. Located in Plainville, live racing in 2022 was held from April to November on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and with occasional Friday afternoons (no lights).
In addition to live harness racing, Plainridge Park offers simulcast racing, together with casino facilities which consist of over 1,200 slot machines, high limit room and lounge, video poker and electronic table games. Owned by Gaming and Leisure Properties and operated by Penn National Gaming.
Massachusetts’s only other harness racing track Foxboro Park closed in 1997 after a legal dispute between its owner Robert Kraft and its operator Charles Sarkis. Kraft sought to reopen Foxboro under a new operator while Gary Piontkowski who had managed Foxboro under Sarkis who was a former Massachusetts Racing Commission (MRC) Chairman, proposed to build a new track at a ninety acre site in Plainville. Kraft withdrew his application weeks later leaving Piontkowski as the only applicant before the MRC.
In November 1997, the MRC issued a conditional license for Piontkowski’s proposed track with a targeted opening date of May 1998. Piontkowski purchased the land for $4.5 million buying an existing 40,000sqft building to be used as a grandstand. Cornerstone Capital financed the project with an $11 million loan. Granted a two month extension of its financing deadline due to Cornerstone never actually committing to the loan and Piontkowski possibly using a loan broker who had since been imprisoned for bank fraud, the MRC approved a new financing plan in April 1998 with ownership of the track shared by nine investors with Piontkowski holding a 15% share.
In May 1998 a neighbouring landowner filed a lawsuit which was later settled out of court by seeking to nullify the track’s building permit thus suspending construction and pushing back the track’s debut to the next season. A new application filed in October 1998 whereby the land purchase and track construction would be financed by real estate developer Lou Giuliano who would then lease the track to Piontkowski’s company for $1 million per year. The MRC approved Plainridge Park’s license in November 1998.
The live racing schedule was seen as an excuse to justify a lucrative off track betting operation and a potential racino where a large room was set aside in the grandstand for up to four hundred slot machines.
A rift grew between Piontkowski and Giuliano over management of the track and in 2000 with Giuliano applying for a license to operate the track himself claiming that Piontkowski’s lease expired on 31 December 1999. The MRC discovered Giuliano did not own the land only held an option to buy it from Boston investment company Realty Financial Partners (RFP) who had financed the purchase. Piontkowski’s company retained the license subject to obtaining finance to buy the track from RFP. Giuliano failed to exercise his option to buy the track with RFP claiming control and serving an eviction notice on Piontkowski. In May 2000 a sale who completed with Piontkowski’s group buying Plainridge from RFP for $13.6 million to be partially financed by Anchor Gaming. Dozens of lawsuits were filed between Piontkowski and Giuliano with proceedings lasting through 2005. Giuliano attempted to develop a nearby competing harness racing track without success.
Piontkowski supported proposed legislation authorising slot machines at the state’s four racetracks with plans for a $180m expansion of Plainridge. The site was seen as having limited potential due to its proximity to the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe who were likely to develop a casino under any expanded gambling regimen. Piontkowski was credited with killing a casino bill pushed by Governor Deval Patrick because it had no provision for racinos in 2008.
Massachusetts enacted casino legislation authorizing up to three resort style casinos and one slots only facility in 2011. Plainridge was the state’s first gaming applicant submitting its $400,000 application fee as soon as the process opened. Piontkowski stated that Plainridge could not continue live racing without the additional revenue of slot machines with one of the track’s owners saying the site could otherwise be redeveloped as a shopping centre. The construction of a 1,000 car parking garage was began in late 2012 to demonstrate to the Gaming Commission Plainridge’s proposal would be the quickest to open and begin generating tax revenue for the state.
State investigators in early 2013 found that Piontkowski had taken over $1 million in cash from the track and while the distributions were recorded on the company books they had not been approved by the track’s majority owners. Piontkowski was pushed out as president by the owners who bought out his shares. Plainridge’s application for a gaming license was rejected by the Gaming Commission in August 2013 due to the organisations “culture”.
Penn National Gaming having failed to win approval for a proposed slot parlour in Tewksbury reached a deal to pursue a gaming license at Plainridge Park with the option to buy the track if successful. Voters in Plainville as a condition of the gaming licence approved the slots plan by a margin of three to one. A gaming licence was granted to Penn National in February 2014 having overcome competition from other applicants in a Cordish Company’s Leominister slot and a former Raynham greyhound track. Invited guests attended a soft opening of the slot parlour on 22 June 2015 and opening to the public on 24 June.
Penn National sold Plainridge’s real estate assets to Gaming and Leisure Properties for $250 million in October 2018 leasing them back for $25 million per year.
Plainridge Park stats – no hub rail; nine starters behind the mobile gate; free general/clubhouse admission; free parking for 1,000 cars; grandstand capacity 3,000; clubhouse capacity 3,000.
Dining options available at Plainridge Park include Trackside food to go and Dark Horse Bar while restaurants located inside the casino include Slack’s Oyster House & Grill, Flutie’s Sports Pub, Grab & Game, Slice, Smashburger, Dunkin’ and Revolution Lounge.
Signature events at Plainridge Park are the $250,000 Spirit of Massachusetts Trot won in 2020 and 2021 by North America’s 2020 fastest trotter of the year Manchego, T1:49.3, $3m earner on 26 July 2020 driven by Dexter Dunn and the $100,000 Clara Barton Pace won in 2019 and 2020 by champion mare and 2019 USTA Horse of Year Shartin whose track record 1:48.1 US was equalled by Lyons Sentinel in the 2021 edition. Massachusetts Sires Stakes events for two and three year old pacers/trotters colts and fillies are run at Plainridge Park. In earlier years to 2012, the Labour Day Bert Beckwith Memorial Invitational featured some of North America’s leading pacers N.B : race returned in 2021, $50,000 pace. In 2004 nine different track records were established, including the 1:49.3 effort by Chewy Gross and Mike MacDonald that equalled the then all age record set by Space Shuttle.
Closed –
Bay State Raceway/New England Harness Raceway/Foxboro Raceway/Foxboro Park (FOX)
Opening as Bay State Raceway in 1947, the track was known by several names beginning with Bay State Raceway, then New England Harness Raceway, Foxboro Raceway and finally prior to going out of existence in 1997 as Foxboro Park. Located off Route 1 in Foxborough exactly 22½ miles between Boston and Providence, Rhode Island, it stood next to Foxboro Stadium and the site of Gillette Stadium.
Starting out as a half mile harness track named Bay State Raceway, in the early years it had an open air grandstand as it ran summer dates between Rockingham Park and Suffolk Downs tracks. Over its tenure, the facility accommodated 15,000 patrons with seating for 3,500 in the grandstand, 1,500 in the clubhouse and a dining room holding 200. Over 1,200 horses could be housed in stalls and there was parking for 10,000 cars.
Entrepreneur E.M. Loew, movie theatre magnate and former owner of Latin Quarter nightclubs in Manhattan ND Miami, was the senior partner in the original group that constructed Bay State Raceway along with horseman Paul Bowser and Ed Keller. Opening on 17 August 1947 for an inaugural thirty day meet, 12,000 people attended the first night of racing with betting of $55,523 breaking the record for a new tracks first day. Many modern amenities including lights for night racing were a feature. Construction of the remaining barns and buildings that were not completed for the grand opening but continued into the winter in readiness for the 1948 spring racing meet.
The track struggled in the early years against existing thoroughbred and greyhound tracks. Paul Bowser died in 1960 with E.M. Loew continuing to run the track. He died in 1984, aged 86. A record betting handle of $737,838 was wagered on 9 August 1969 and 16,006 fans set an attendance record on 18 July 1970.
The merger of the two major professional American football leagues in the United States in 1970 : the National Football League (NFL) and the American Football League (AFL), required all teams to have a stadium with a capacity of 50,000. The only stadium in the Boston area large enough was Harvard Stadium but the university would not lease it long term to the Bay State Patriots. With interest in the team from groups in Memphis, Tampa, Seattle, Portland, Birmingham and Jacksonville believing the Patriots might not be able to secure a stadium, Loew generously donated fifteen acres of land adjacent to the track for $1 to Billy Sullivan owner of the struggling Bay State Patriots for construction of a stadium.
Sullivan selected Loew’s location over sites in Saugus, Sturbridge, Haverhill and Salem, New Hampshire. The area was built in only 11 months at a cost of $6 million and opened in time for the 1971 season as Schaffer Stadium (later Foxboro Stadium). The Bay State Patriots name was almost immediately changed to New England Patriots with the new Stadium keeping the franchise in New England.
In 1971 the track expanded to five eights of a mile/500ft straight and Schaefer Stadium the new home of the New England Patriots opened next to the Raceway on 1 September 1971. Bay State Raceway picked up additional dates when Suffolk Downs ceased harness racing and ran an autumn meeting. At the end of 1971 the grandstand was glass enclosed and heated in anticipation of its first winter meet in 1972. During its Bay State days the track was part of The Grand Circuit, the only New England track to ever have that honour and also part of the Atlantic Seaboard Circuit.
The track was sold by Loew to Foxboro Associates led by Ed Andleman and Ed Keelan for $9.6m. On 1 December 1976 Bay State Raceway changed hands being renamed New England Harness Raceway mirroring the football team’s name change for regional marketing purposes. The new owners had immediate problems with the stadium owners and during refinancing a property surveyor noticed that part of the football stadium was on track property. A battle raged whereby the New England Patriots would have had to move their Labour Day home opener to Pittsburgh. Patriot’s owner Billy Sullivan’s fierce publicity campaign to get the track to relent ended with him taking over the track’s lease.
A barn fire on 20 February 1977 took the lives fourteen horses.
This lease transfer was the start of the track’s problems with Sullivan. Driver Ken Heeney died from injuries received during the races held on 20 September 1986. The football team and stadium’s losses mounted, the result of poor gate takings, declines in attendances, failed financing of a Michael Jackson tour and poor outside investments by the Sullivan’s saw them fall into serious debt. The track went into bankruptcy in 1986 and racing ceased on 26 February 1987 with the track padlocked and horsemen evicted.
Behind the scenes Robert Kraft acquired a parcel of land adjacent to the racetrack and stadium in 1985. Robert Kraft and Steve Karp purchased an option on the track In January 1987, allowing Kraft who had tried unsuccessfully to purchase the Patriots, to prevent the financially struggling Sullivan’s from hosting non-Patriot events at the stadium during race meets. This put Kraft in pole position to purchase the stadium, which he did in 1988 after working out a deal with the bankruptcy court to take over the lease of Schaffer Stadium changing the name to Foxboro Stadium in 1989. Kraft would eventually purchase the New England Patriots team in 1994.
The racetrack closed in December 1989 after Billy Sullivan’s son Chuck Sullivan who leased the track from Foxboro Associates failed to make his payments. The owner of Wonderland Dog Track in Revere and Chairman and CEO of Back Bay restaurant Group Charles Sarkis in 1990 persuaded the Massachusetts Racing Commission (MRC) to permit him reopening Foxboro Raceway as a dual thoroughbred/standardbred venue. He entered into a lease of the renamed Foxboro Park Raceway, in line with the stadium name.
Thoroughbred racing had not been seen held in Massachusetts since the closure of Suffolk Downs in 1989. Foxboro was granted a license to hold thoroughbred races from May to September and harness races from September to December as well as off track betting in November 1991. Track renovations included a grandstand pub, circle lounge area, new front straight chute, two teletheaters, 155 pari mutuel machines and fifty Tiny TIM personal betting machines (most on any USA track at that time and first such machines at any track in New England).
Foxboro Park reopened on 27 May 1992 with thoroughbred racing. The track was granted seventy two thoroughbred racing dates but was only able to complete thirty five. Owing to an outbreak of an equine virus, which led to a lack of horses, low level of betting and significant cost overruns during construction, the track suffered financially. The last thoroughbred race was run on 7 December 1992 at which point they cut their losses and concentrated on the Standardbreds in an endeavour to recoup the funds spent on renovations.
Harness racing recommenced at Foxboro Raceway on 18 September 1992, the final chapter in the track’s chequered history. Kraft decided to build a new stadium but the racetrack was in the way of his plans plus the possibility of a gaming license becoming available to the track operator made it an even more desirable property to be acquired if that came to pass.
Patriot’s owner Robert Kraft purchased Foxboro Park from Andelman’s group for $16 million on 29 May 1996 meaning he now owned the racetrack, New England Patriots and Foxboro Stadium. He planned to use the Foxboro Park property as an alternate site for his new football stadium in case plans for the proposed South Boston site failed. Kraft’s purchase also gave him access to Foxboro Stadium’s parking lots. Kraft bought the property four months after his option on the track expired allowing him to buy it without former business partner Steve Karp (who held the option with Kraft) and at a lower price ($16 million instead of $18 million).
After purchasing Foxboro Park, Kraft moved to evict Sarkis on the grounds that he did not have a valid lease and his failure to pay rent on his lease in an effort to take over the property. Although unprofitable the track was potentially worth millions as the Massachusetts legislature was considering Governor William Weld’s proposal for slot licenses at the state’s four racetracks.
On May 29, 1997, a Norfolk Superior Court judge sided with Kraft and on 29 July, Sarkis was ordered to vacate the property by midnight the following day or accept three conditions i) create a fund to assist horsemen relocating to other tracks ii) repay workers who renovated the track iii) pay rent; and leave the property on 25 August. Sarkis gave up his legal battle immediately handing over the track to Kraft after his decisive court victory
During his battle with Sarkis, Kraft supported Virginian racing consultant Thomas Aronson’s application for Foxboro Park’s racing license. After Sarkis’ eviction, Aronson announced he would not apply for racing dates, citing the MRC as a “hostile group of regulators” making it “extremely difficult for [him] to suggest to Foxboro Realty and The Kraft Group that there is good reason to pursue racing at Foxboro”. Kraft then backed Foxboro Development Associates Limited Partnership, headed by attorney James Cobery, for the Foxboro track’s license but the group withdrew its application for racing dates.
Foxboro Park Massachusetts’s only harness racing track closed after completion of the legal dispute between its owner Robert Kraft and its operator Charles Sarkis. Competing plans to resurrect the sport were brought before the MRC, with Kraft seeking to reopen Foxboro under a new operator, while Sarkis’s manager at Foxboro Gary Piontkowski proposed to build a new track at a ninety acre site in Plainville (opened as Plainridge Park in 1999). Kraft’s application was withdrawn weeks later leaving Piontkowski as harness racing’s only hope.
The last race run at Foxboro took place on 18 August 1997 with the track padlocked for good this time. The track stood derelict being used as a parking lot for almost three years before being torn down during construction of Gillette Stadium with work beginning on 24 March 2000.
Next Article : Massachusetts – part two
Peter Craig
12 October 2022
Approved By Dean Baring www.harnessbred.com
Driving The Future Of Harness Racing
