Sportsman’s Park is set to expand into the auto racing business and could have a CART race as early as the late summer-early fall of 1999.
“That (timing is) conceivable,” a source close to the deal told the Tribune.
The detailed plans of this expansion are expected to be announced early next month. Until then, those involved in the deal either refuse to comment or are reluctant to do so.
A key figure in the project is Chip Ganassi, the owner of the Target/Chip Ganassi Racing team that has won the last two CART championships with drivers Alex Zanardi last year and Jimmy Vasser in 1996. Ganassi and Sportsman’s president Charlie Bidwill are friends who were together at last month’s Daytona 500 and at last May’s Motorola 300 at Gateway International Raceway in Downstate Madison where they presumably discussed auto racing at the Cicero track.
“We’ve been exploring it,” Ed Duffy, Sportsman’s chief operating officer, said Thursday. “In a couple of weeks we’ll be ready to make an announcement. I won’t say anything further.”
According to sources, plans call for significant renovation of the current seven-eighths-mile racetrack and the park’s barn area. The renovation would enable Sportsman’s to put the motor speedway outside the oval used for horse racing. The target date for completion is autumn of 1999.
In an interview last fall, Duffy suggested a state-of-the-art training center capable of accommodating 3,000 thoroughbreds be built 30 to 40 miles from Sportsman’s. Conceivably, this training center could be part of the grand design.
“You’d have good year-round facilities in a rural environment and good veterinary facilities,” Duffy said at the time. “Horsemen wouldn’t have to worry about getting stalls whenever racing shifts to another track.”
Duffy also said at the time he believes the area around Sportsman’s will “change dramatically” and “go through a renaissance” because of the city of Chicago’s plans for the area around nearby Midway Airport.
Even if Arlington International Racecourse doesn’t reopen, a temporary shutdown of Sportsman’s wouldn’t create insurmountable thoroughbred scheduling problems. Either Hawthorne Race Course, which is located only a block south of Sportsman’s, could pick up all of the vacated 1999 spring and summer dates or Balmoral Park, which has been confined to harness racing since 1991, could be host to a thoroughbred meeting.
An auto venue would be the latest chapter in the history of Sportsman’s, which started as the quarter-mile Hawthorne Kennel Club dog track. It was converted to a half-mile thoroughbred track and reopened as Sportsman’s Park in 1932. The track was expanded to five-eighths-mile in 1956 and to seven-eighths in 1992.
Sportsman’s added harness racing in 1949 and boasted the premier Midwest harness meeting until this year. As part of the deal enabling Sportsman’s and Hawthorne to divide thoroughbred dates formerly at Arlington, Sportsman’s harness president Billy Johnston agreed to a schedule calling for year-around harness racing at Balmoral and Maywood Park. Johnston heads the groups that own those tracks.
If Sportsman’s adds auto racing it’s unlikely that harness racing would return.
Arlington owner Dick Duchossois also is getting involved in auto racing. Confirming a Jan. 27 Tribune story, he announced this week that he had joined with Turfway Park chairman Jerry Carroll and three other investors to buy Louisville Motor Speedway. The group also is going ahead with plans to build a 1 1/2-mile superspeedway in Gallatin, Ky. Duchossois says he has “no intention” of converting Arlington into a speedway.
The plans to convert Sportsman’s into a dual-purpose track herald the arrival of a wildly expanding sport to this area. In recent years, proposals to build auto racing tracks in DuPage County and Kankakee have fallen through, and just last month a group that includes Indianapolis Motor Speedway President Tony George disclosed plans to build one in Plano.
The attraction a major city such as Chicago holds for auto racing is clear. Both its attendance and TV ratings are climbing. Its fans are passionate about the sport and also very loyal to the corporations that sponsor teams.
This is why firms such as Chicago-based Motorola are willing to spend $6 million to $8 million annually to be the primary sponsor of an auto racing team. And why it makes economic sense for a place such as Sportsman’s to get involved in the sport.
CART, North America’s top open-wheel racing circuit, expanded its schedule this year from 17 to 19 races. But, as further testament to its growing popularity, that schedule next year could include 22 races.
Besides Chicago, CART is looking at running on a temporary road course in Mexico City and at Road Atlanta, a permanent road course just outside that city.
