Hollywood Park Racetrack

Hollywood Park

Aerial view of Hollywood Park. The L.A. Forum is visible to the upper left.
Location Inglewood, California, USA
Coordinates 33°57′1.61″N 118°20′16.11″W / 33.9504472°N 118.3378083°W / 33.9504472; -118.3378083Coordinates: 33°57′1.61″N 118°20′16.11″W / 33.9504472°N 118.3378083°W / 33.9504472; -118.3378083
Owned by Bay Meadows Land Co.
Date opened June 10, 1938
Date closed December 22, 2013
Course type Thoroughbred. Flat: Synthetic & Turf.
Notable races Hollywood Gold Cup (G1)
American Oaks Invitational (G1)
Hollywood Derby (G1)
Matriarch Stakes (G1)
Oak Tree Racing Association:
Yellow Ribbon Stakes (G1)
Hirsch Memorial Turf Championship Stakes (G1)
Ancient Title Stakes (G1)
Official website

Hollywood Park, later sold and referred to as Betfair Hollywood Park, was a thoroughbred race course until it was shut down for racing and training in December 2013. The casino remains open, containing a poker card room located in Inglewood, California, about 3 miles (5 km) from Los Angeles International Airport and adjacent to the Forum indoor arena.

It will be the site of Los Angeles Entertainment Center, home of the Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League, when the stadium is completed in 2019. Until then, the Rams will temporarily play home games at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for the next three seasons starting in 2016.

History

Founding and early years

The track was opened in June 10, 1938 by the Hollywood Turf Club[1] the racetrack was designed by noted racetrack architect Arthur Froehlich. Its chairman was Jack L. Warner[1] of the Warner Bros. film studio. Prominent shareholders included Jack Warner's brother and fellow Warner Bros. executive Harry, Hollywood studio executives Walt Disney, Samuel Goldwyn, Darryl Zanuck, actors Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Joan Blondell, George Jessel, Ronald Colman and Ralph Bellamy. In addition to being shareholders film directors Raoul Walsh and Mervyn LeRoy were also founding members of the track's Board of Directors with Jack and Harry Warner and Al Jolson.

War closure and rebuilding

Hollywood Park closed from 1942 to 1944 due to World War II, where it was used as a storage facility. In 1949, the grandstand and clubhouse were destroyed by a fire; the rebuilt facility reopened in 1950. In 1984, the race track was extended from one mile (1.6 km) around to 1 1⁄8 miles (1.8 km) around prior to the first Breeders Cup race. In 1986, the turf course was similarly expanded from just over 7⁄8 mile (1.4 km) around to 1 mile 145 feet (1.654 km) around.

By the late 1980s the racetrack Hollywood Park, though frequented by celebrities, was near the point of bankruptcy.[2] As of 1989, a group of investors was working to buy Los Alamitos Racetrack in California for $68 million.[3] Los Alamitos, owned by Hollywood Park, was still under its original ownership as of 1991, though a significant portion of the stock had been bought by external investors.[4][5] RD Hubbard became CEO of Hollywood Park in April 1991, after having purchased a portion of the company's stock in late 1990.[2] He was assisted in the ouster of the former chairman Marje Everett, who had run Hollywood Park since 1972, by company shareholder Tom Gamel and sports businessman Harry Ornest.[4] In 1991 $20 million was spent improving the racetrack. That year the park earned its first profit in five years, and despite rioting in nearby Los Angeles in 1992, annual profits that year increased to $5.4 million.[2] By 1993, the Los Angeles Times wrote that "shareholders at Hollywood Park... are enjoying substantial investment gains."[6] A card club casino was added to the complex in 1994, as Hollywood Park underwent a $100 million expansion into Hollywood Park Casino, which opened in the summer of 1994. Also in 1994, Hollywood Park Inc. purchased the Arizona-based Turf Paradise Race Track for $34 million in stock.[2]

Hollywood Park Inc. suffered losses in 1995, though at the end of 1996, Hollywood Park bought Boomtown, Inc. for $188 million. Boomtown operated and owed casinos in several cities such as Las Vegas and New Orleans. Boomtown merged with the casino operator Pinnacle Entertainment in 1998. Hollywood Park was purchased by Churchill Downs Incorporated on September 10, 1999[2] for $140 million. Churchill Downs acquired Hollywood Park-Casino in the process, which was in turn leased by Hollywood Park Inc. (later named Pinnacle Entertainment).[2] The previous owners of the track renamed their company Pinnacle Entertainment to concentrate on its gambling interests.

Sale and recent developments

In July 2005, Churchill Downs Incorporated sold the track to the Bay Meadows Land Company for $260 million in cash. Under the terms of the deal, the company, which operates Bay Meadows in San Mateo, was to continue thoroughbred racing at Hollywood Park for at least three years. According to Bay Meadows officials, the continuation of Hollywood Park as a racing venue after that depended on California allowing more gambling, like slot machines, to the track.[7]

Some of the Hollywood Park land was sold to real estate developers to build a new housing community called the Inglewood Renaissance. Development began in 2005.

New grass was planted on the turf course after Hollywood Park's spring-summer meet in 2005. Due to safety concerns, however, turf racing was not conducted for that year's autumn meet. As a result, several major stakes races that comprised Hollywood's Autumn Turf Festival were cancelled that year.

After the conclusion of Hollywood's spring-summer meet in 2006, it was announced that a second chute would be built inside the turf course to accommodate sprint races at six furlongs. This follows a similar move by Monmouth Park to build a turf chute for sprint races.

In 2010, Hollywood Park played host for the first time to Oak Tree.[8]

Betfair/Hollywood Park Agreement

The Hollywood Park Racing Association and Betfair US, the Los Angeles-based subsidiary of Betfair that also owns TVG Network, completed a historic agreement March 13, 2012 intended to transform the customer experience for fans at the venue as well as online and on television. Under terms of the five-year deal, Hollywood Park was renamed “Betfair Hollywood Park’’ in what is the first naming rights agreement for a horse racing venue in the United States.[1]

Closure

Former racetrack site, in 2015

On May 9, 2013 in a letter to employees, Hollywood Park president F. Jack Liebau announced that the track would be closing at the end of their fall racing season in 2013. In the letter, Liebau stated that the 260 acres on which the track sits "now simply has a higher and better use", and that "in the absence of a favorable change in racing's business model, the ultimate development of the Hollywood property was inevitable". It is expected that the track will be demolished and replaced by housing units, park land and an entertainment complex, while the casino will be renovated. It is also anticipated that Hollywood Park's racing dates from 2014 onward will be transferred to Santa Anita Park, Los Alamitos Race Course and Del Mar Racetrack.

On December 22, 2013 at 6:11pm the final race[9] was run with Woodsman Luck taking first place, Depreciable in second place and Danderek in third place, concluding 75 years of continuous racing in Southern California. The complex was demolished in 2014 to make way for a new residential complex.

NFL stadium

In 2014, Stan Kroenke, owner of the NFL's St. Louis Rams, purchased a 60-acre parcel of land adjacent to the Forum arena in Inglewood, California.[10] "Kroenke's 60 acres aren't actually big enough for the [NFL] stadium and parking, but his announced partnership for the neighboring land, with Stockbridge Capital Group, would fold the stadium into a larger office/retail/residential project master planned by Hart Howerton[11]. The stadium would be ready for the 2018 season, and has support from local politicians—easy enough, since all of the L.A. proposals are absent any public funding" [12]

On February 24, 2015, the Inglewood City Council approved a plan to build an 70,000-seat football stadium on the site in anticipation of the St. Louis Rams moving back to Los Angeles (which was the team's previous home from 1946 until 1994).[13] And on May 31, 2015, with the Inglewood mayor on hand sporting a Rams cap, the grandstand was reduced to rubble in a flurry of timed explosions.

On January 12, 2016, the NFL voted to move the Rams back to Los Angeles 30-2, where a stadium will be built on the former Hollywood Park racetrack site.

Notable events at the track

Physical attributes

The track had a 1 1⁄8-mile (1.8 km) dirt oval, plus a 1-mile 145 foot (1.654 km) turf oval. The track regularly seated 10,000 people. A new Cushion Track racing surface was installed in September, 2006 to replace the existing dirt, making Hollywood Park the first track in California to meet the California Horse Racing Board's guideline that all tracks in the state replace dirt surfaces with a safer artificial surface by the end of 2007.

TV personalities

Racing

These races were the graded stakes races run at Hollywood Park. (All turf stakes listed below were put on hiatus during the 2005 Autumn Meet.)

Grade 1 :

Grade 2 :

Grade 3 :

Ungraded stakes :

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 History of Hollywood Park, Retrieved October 20, 2012.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Stallings, Dianne (August 26, 2010). "A complicated life". Ruidoso News. Retrieved June 19, 2015.
  3. ↑ Christine, Bill (June 29, 1989). "Horse Racing : Get Out of Dodge: Hubbard Selling Interests in Kansas Tracks". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 19, 2015.
  4. 1 2 Christine, Bill (February 19, 1991). "Hubbard Looks to Track's Future : Hollywood Park: He is working 15-hour days in his new role as president to get things ready for the April 24 opener.". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2015-06-16.
  5. ↑ Christine, Bill (February 19, 1991). "Hubbard Looks to Track's Future : Hollywood Park: He is working 15-hour days in his new role as president to get things ready for the April 24 opener.". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 16, 2015.
  6. ↑ Christine, Bill (November 17, 1993). "Change for the Bettor : Hollywood Park's Hubbard Fuels Innovation". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved June 6, 2015.
  7. ↑ The Orange County Register, July 7, 2005.
  8. ↑ "Inaugural Oak Tree At Hollywood Park Meet Will Begin Sept. 30; Zenyatta Scheduled To Return In $250,000 Lady’s Secret On Oct. 2". Archived from the original on March 7, 2012. Retrieved October 20, 2012.
  9. ↑ Final Race at Hollywood Park on December 22, 2013 Video on YouTube (Retrieved May 8, 2014 from the OFFICIAL Hollywood Park YouTube channel).
  10. ↑ http://www.latimes.com/sports/nfl/la-sp-0105-nfl-la-stadium-20150105-story.html
  11. ↑ "Architect Paul Milana on Revitalization and Revival | Hollywood Park". www.hollywoodparklife.com. Retrieved 2016-04-11.
  12. ↑ http://deadspin.com/report-rams-owner-bought-land-threatening-to-build-l-1677488994
  13. ↑ "Inglewood approves stadium plans". ESPN. Associated Press. February 25, 2015. Retrieved February 25, 2015.

External links

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