Epsom Balconies in the old Epsom Stand. Photo / Jason Dorday
A crippling interest bill is threatening to cut into the future of northern harness racing as the code in the region undergoes a major rebuild both on and off the track.
Harness racing in Auckland is set for a racing boost for the next few seasons as the TAB/Entain heavily back Alexandra Park racing alongside Addington most Friday nights as they attempt to make that day the weekly home of harness racing.
That will put Alexandra Park front and centre of the new push to get more eyeballs, and hopefully turnover, on the code while Auckland Trotting Club bosses are also thrilled to have their Auckland Cup night return to New Years Eve after the underwhelming response to holding it in late May.
Add in the new $1 million Golden Gait race night on December 20 and Alexandra Park, and Auckland harness racing fans, have plenty to look forward to in the remainder of 2024.
But the most important date for the club is November 8, the date the ATC is scheduled to receive the remaining $90m from the sale of the Franklin Park Training Centre.
The ATC’s financial future was destroyed when the first two apartment complexes built at Alexandra Park encountered enormous issues and losses, the fallout from which still continues.
The ATC found itself owing over $120m although that amount was almost halved by the sale of remaining land at Alexandra Park, which will now be developed by its new owners.
The ATC has a contract to sell the Franklin Park Training Centre in Pukekohe for $100m, with the Chinese-based company who is buying it having already paid its $10m deposit.
The remaining $90m is due for payment on November 8, just days before Cup week in Christchurch and it can’t come soon enough for the ATC.
ATC president Jamie MacKinnon revealed to the Herald this week the club is paying $115,000 interest a week on its outstanding loans and when the $90m is paid and it clears its debts the ATC will have little more than $10m left.
That is, sadly, its only cash uplift after selling all the property it can while still retaining Alexandra Park as a race track.
Whether that affects the size or quality of the training centre the ATC is committed to building remains to be seen but the numbers make depressing reading, although without an understanding bank and some astute legal assistance the damage could have been terminal.
Alexandra Park came far closer to closing than most in the industry will ever know and that would have been disastrous for harness racing in New Zealand, meaning the code wouldn’t have had a presence in New Zealand’s two biggest cities after Hutt Park near Wellington closed in 2002.
With that threat seemingly behind the ATC, the future strategic battles loom larger.
“The interest payments have been brutal and are really cutting into how much money we will be left with,” admits MacKinnon.
“We originally thought after the sale of Franklin Park we would have over $20m left but that number is now more like $10m.”
While the club could soon be out of debt that may not last long as it is committed to building a new training centre to replace Franklin Park.
“The developer who is buying it has agreed to a two-year lease back to us so we have two years from November, all going well, to have a new training centre,” says MacKinnon.
“We have looked very hard at three different places and the one that is most favoured at the moment is in Maramarua.
“We also need to talk more to Harness Racing New Zealand about how much they can contribute to it because we don’t believe we should be the only club in the country who has to build a training centre to keep racing going up here.
“Obviously we are looking forward to the money coming through as the interest we have been paying for a long time now is quite stifling.”
The mega money stuff up aside, the ATC now faces a less important but still challenging problem of how to draw enough horses to race there almost every Friday next season.
It will be aided by Cambridge having most of its meetings moved to Tuesdays but MacKinnon says for Alexandra Park to be able to fill fields it will look to programme more sprint and 2200m races.
“We like holding 2700m races but we believe horses are more likely to back up the next week if they race in sprints or up to 2200m races so we will be programming more of those.”
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.