Yavapai Downs to close

May 26, 2011 - The news that Arizona horsemen were dreading finally arrived Wednesday after days of nervous waiting: The Yavapai Downs horse racetrack will not open at all this summer.

Yavapai Downs operators told the Arizona Racing Commission Wednesday afternoon that they will not conduct a summer meet in Prescott Valley. It usually runs Memorial Day Weekend through Labor Day Weekend.

They hope to reopen the track in 2012, possibly with the help of a new partnership, investor group or restructuring, said Jeff Wasowicz, board chair of the non-profit Yavapai County Farm & Agriculture Association that owns the track.

Racing Commission members and others questioned whether horsemen would return after getting burned this year.

"Keeping everybody in the dark has not been the appropriate thing to do," Arizona Racing Commission Chair Erin Owens told the Downs officials.

Horsemen at Wednesday's commission meeting in Phoenix said some people wasted their last dollars to get to Yavapai Downs this month, and they were angry that the Downs didn't make a decision before they arrived.

The lack of notice was "reprehensible," trainer Steve Irlando said.

"You've hurt a lot of people," he told Wasowicz. Other Yavapai Downs board members did not attend the meeting.

"All of us went up there fully confident we would have a meet up there," trainer Debbie Ferguson said, trying to hold back tears. "There has been gross neglect on the part of the board."

Just two weeks ago, Yavapai Downs General Manager Mike Mullaney told the commission everything was good to go, Owens recalled.

"There's been so much uncertainty and lack of clarity," she said.

Wasowicz said that as late as Monday, he still held out hope the races could take place.

"But as we worked through ideas, we always came to the same conclusion that this is not going to work," he told the commission.

The association just cannot come up with the money to start the Yavapai Downs races Saturday as planned, Wasowicz said.

"When this new board took over operations of Yavapai Downs about a year and a half ago, we realized that the track faced some very severe financial challenges," Wasowicz said. "The depth and the complicated nature of those challenges slowly but steadily grew, and to this day, new problems continue to arise."

The track's accounts payable has been in arrears for years, Owens said.

The summer racing meet in the Prescott area has been operating since 1960, moving to a new $23 million Prescott Valley facility in 2001. County fair racing started in Prescott in 1913.

But horse racing dates back to Prescott's early territorial days when local ranchers would bet a silver dollar that they would win a match race, noted Vincent Francia, general manager at the state's largest racetrack, Turf Paradise in Phoenix. He remembers seeing a story about it when he used to come up to Prescott Downs to help organize early off-track betting.

"So that's where it all started," he told The Daily Courier after Wednesday's meeting.

Help for horsemen, employees

Turf Paradise and the Arizona Horseman's Benevolent and Protective Association (HBPA) officials told the Racing Commission Wednesday they will come to Yavapai Downs today to help stranded horsemen out with money.

"Whoever needs a roof over their head is coming to my house," added one person in the audience, Lisa Jenkins.

But most of the horsemen appeared to have abandoned the track by Wednesday afternoon.

Along with more than 100 horsemen who had arrived at the track for the season, the track already had hired more than 100 of its 300 seasonal workers.

"Whoever we can afford to keep, we'll keep," Wasowicz said.

Wasowicz said he will be at the track today to talk to horsemen. Yavapai Downs will allow trainers and others to stay for several weeks if they have no place to go, and they'll leave on the electricity and water, he said. The four-day Coconino races are the only other summer horse races in Arizona.