Letter To The Editor: Reimagining Racing In The East In 2028

[Wandering Eyes]

As relief for all the talk of impending track closures, take a look inside my crystal ball for a glimpse of what racing could look like in New York, Maryland and Florida three years from now…

Imagine the year is 2028. A newly reconstructed Belmont Park, thanks to a massive $455 million capital infusion, has secured the future of racing in New York for another half-century. The last time Belmont underwent wholesale reconstruction was in 1968, when Nelson Rockefeller was governor.

Belmont's new grandstand, designed by stadium architect Populous in collaboration with NYRA, has modernized the race-day experience. By shrinking Belmont's grandstand from 1.275 million square feet to one-fifth its former size, the stylish concourse provides a sleek new venue for year-round racing. It is a work of art, admirable as a piece of sculpture in a more park-like setting. The increased green space around it has given New Yorkers what they asked for: more family-style outdoor seating similar to Saratoga's backyard.

Increased purses for New York-bred horses have incentivized breeders and owners to invest in the state's ecosystem. Belmont's new, all-weather Tapeta track enables year-round racing in winter, reducing equine injuries and rainy-day scratches by turf runners. The winterized facility proudly hosted the Breeders' Cup in November 2027, marking the event's first return to the Northeast since 2007 at Monmouth Park.

Just as triumphant was the return of the Belmont Stakes to its original home, where new tunnels and infrastructure below the 45-acre infield supported a party worthy of everybody who is anybody under 45 in New York. Creative event programming draws a younger demographic who never stepped foot in the now demolished “Big A” at Aqueduct, whose vast and dark 1959 concourse had become an obsolete relic.

In Maryland, a newly-reconstructed Pimlico Race Course, located five miles from downtown Baltimore, will once again host the Preakness Stakes following a $400 million reconstruction that began in 2024. A creative deal that year secured racing's future in Maryland when the Stronach Group agreed to transfer ownership of Pimlico to a new Maryland Thoroughbred Racetrack Operating Authority. 1/ST also closed Laurel Park's gates forever to consolidate Maryland racing at Pimlico. And Pimlico's original 19th century cast iron gate was returned to its proper home after being on display at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga.

The new concourse at Pimlico was designed by the same architects behind the recent renovations at Belmont, Churchill Downs and Ascot. Their firm went by the name HOK when it designed Baltimore's Camden Yards, which opened in 1992. That retro-style ballpark for the Orioles revolutionized stadium design, bringing back quirky ballpark features and an intimate fan experience from a bygone era. It spawned a wave of replacements of over-scaled, cookie-cutter concrete stadiums that had opened in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati in 1970 and 1971.

The most surprising development in 2028 is the return of thoroughbred racing to Hialeah Park, 12 miles from downtown Miami, for the first time since 2001.

This is the outcome of an agreement to secure a future for racing in South Florida reached with Florida horsemen, state officials, and Hialeah's owners, the family of the late John Brunetti Sr., who bought Hialeah in 1977. When the Breeders' Cup comes to Hialeah in 2029, it will fulfill a dream held by Brunetti until his death in 2018. The event hasn't been in Florida since 1999.

All of this followed the Stronach Group's expressed interest in the development of its valuable Gulfstream Park real estate over maintaining racing at the site. Other than perennial Pegasus ticket holders, few racegoers are sad to see Gulfstream go. In 2006, when it reopened after a $130 million renovation, critics called it a glorified shopping mall. One wag from Palm Beach said its paddock reminded her of Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas: over the top, and tacky.

By contrast, when Hialeah reopened after renovations in 1932, the track became one of the most beautiful in the U.S. It still is, thanks to a recent touch up and its preservation and stewardship over a half-century by three generations of the Brunetti family. Its Renaissance Revival clubhouse, built in the Great Depression by Philadelphia horseman Joseph Widener and Kentucky horseman Edward Bradley, remains intact. It is flanked by restored gardens of native flora and an infield lake with iconic flamingos. A statue memorializes 1948 Triple Crown winner Citation, who won all three of his races there that February.

Palm Meadows Training Center, almost 50 miles north of Gulfstream Park, was not a viable alternative. The surrounding community of Boynton Beach was not exactly hospitable. Real estate values there loomed as another long-term threat to racing. And racing interests preferred not to remain dependent on the site's owner, the Stronach Group.

This opened a path for a new generation of horsemen, in partnership with John Brunetti Jr. and his nephew, Stephen Brunetti Jr., to revive Hialeah, as Widener and Bradley did nearly a century before. Importantly, revenue from one of Florida's top-performing casinos at Hialeah has saved the track's owners from converting coveted trackside standing room into premium seating. At Hialeah's apron and paddock, blue-blooded snowbirds–who arrive conveniently via two nearly adjacent airports–still rub elbows with blue collars from Miami's surrounding neighborhoods.

To paraphrase 20th century turf writer Joe Palmer, Hialeah is one of the last places where the casual racegoer “can see racing. Elsewhere, he merely sees races, which isn't the same thing at all.”

For fans of racing in the East, it's as if some tracks had to die and go to heaven before the sport could enjoy this rebirth.

In Florida, as in New York and Maryland, they say happiness is having something to look forward to.

Writer Carter Wilkie lives in Boston, where Suffolk Downs closed in 2019.

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