The cause of a fire Sunday at the former Balmoral Park racetrack facility remained under investigation Monday, while representatives for the 200-acre property owner would not comment.
Crete Township Fire Protection District Chief Don Radtke said firefighters responded to the multiple alarm fire at 6 a.m. Sunday, with flames extinguished from one of the vacant racetrack’s remaining buildings by 1:30 p.m.
“But we were out there until almost 9:30 (p.m.), hitting hot spots and different things,” Radtke said. “When you have a fire on the roof of a structure that size, you can’t get underneath it.”
Multiple other fire departments assisted, Radtke said, due to the types of equipment and amount of water needed to fight the flames.
“It was a large complex, a lot of fire, a lot of manpower due to where the fire was,” Radtke said.
The Lowell Fire Department said in a social media post that it delivered an estimated 12,000 gallons of water to help with fire suppression.
The state fire marshal’s office is investigating the cause of the fire at the shuttered racetrack, 26435 S. Dixie Highway, in unincorporated Will County near Crete. A spokesperson declined to release any information Monday afternoon, as the investigation remains open and active.
Balmoral Park is owned by Radomir Dobrasinovic, who bought the property in 2021 with intentions to store trucks there, having interests in trucking through MGR Express in Summit, as well as businesses involved in truck sales, leasing, financing and insurance.
Dobrasinovic could not be reached Monday, and a representative from Balmoral Park 21 LLC, which Dobrasinovic owns, declined to comment on the fire.
Balmoral was home to both harness and thoroughbred racing in the decades since it was first purchased in 1926 as Lincoln Fields. Its past owners include high-profile names such as the late shopping mall magnate Edward DeBartolo Sr., and the family of late New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.
The facility was previously damaged by a fire that started in the grandstands during renovations in 1952, forcing a delay in its reopening after closing a decade earlier due to restrictions imposed due to America’s entry into World War II.
Races were shifted to Cicero’s Hawthorne track from 1943 through 1947, and to Washington Park in Homewood from 1948 through 1951.
Harness racing began at the track in 1973, and Balmoral began hosting harness racing solely in 1991, after thoroughbred racing dates were taken away by the state racing board. Balmoral’s final race was held in 2015, after owners at the time declared bankruptcy.
After harness racing ended at Balmoral, the property was purchased out of bankruptcy in 2016 for $1.6 million by New York-based Horse Shows in the Sun, or HITS, which undertook an extensive renovation and conversion to host horse jumping events.
The first of such events took place in 2017, but the property was put on the market in 2020 with an asking price of $4 million.
ostevens@chicagotribune.com. Staff writer Addison Wright contributed.
