Dog race fans ponder next stop for Wonderland

Suffolk partnership leaves future in doubt

Wonderland Greyhound Park is running live racing only on weekends. Attendance at the track in Revere has declined dramatically in recent years, from thousands to hundreds of patrons. (Jason Johns for the Boston Globe/file 2007)

REVERE - Weeds snake under the glass door of the clubhouse lobby of Wonderland Greyhound Park, and a thick patch of spider webs stretches from the door handle to the checkerboard wall.

From the outside, this place appears abandoned. Paint has fallen off or is dull, windows are broken or boarded up, and there are signs that homeless people have taken up residence just outside the building.

For longtime customers, the forlorn appearance reflects the dark cloud that seems to hang over the 73-year-old local icon these days, threatening its existence as they know it. Those fears were heightened Wednesday, when the owners of Wonderland and nearby Suffolk Downs announced they have formed a partnership aimed at attracting a casino, raising questions about the future of the dog track.

In another potential blow, a question on the November ballot to ban dog racing would cause Wonderland to close if its passes.

Yesterday afternoon, about 20 people, most of them elderly, sat fixed to television monitors watching simulcast races, occasionally yelling out a dog's name or number as they watched the races on the screen. Nearby a woman flipped burgers at a small concession stand. Patrons, too entrenched to leave their monitors, barked out orders.

"I come here because people like myself have nowhere else to go," Charles Coney, 72, a retired Harvard University cook, said as he took a break from the races. "I've been coming here for 40 years, and Wonderland isn't anything like it used to be. I don't see this place staying open much longer, because when the casinos come in, it's over."

In its heyday more than four decades ago, Wonderland attracted thousands, causing traffic backups for miles. But since the early 1970s, attendance has dipped precipitously as America's taste for parimutuel wagering has shifted to scratch tickets and casinos.

On most days, only a handful of diehard customers come here to watch simulcast dog racing. The weekends bring live racing, but the crowds usually number only between 200 and 300, according to several patrons.

The Legislature defeated a measure last year that would have brought casinos to the Commonwealth. But a second go-around will probably have more support, according to some analysts, especially now that Suffolk Downs and Wonderland owners have come to an agreement after two years of contentious negotiations.

Clyde Barrow, director of the Center for Policy Analysis at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, which launched the New England Gaming Research Project in 2004, said yesterday that Wonderland would have closed years ago as a racing facility, but the owners are keeping it open in anticipation of eventually getting slot machines.

"Financially they've reached the end of the line, and I would guess they finally painted a realization that they just weren't viable and probably would be a runner-up for any casino license," Barrow said. "If they are going to survive at all, it would be as a partner."

Barrow said there are several possibilities for the owners of Wonderland. If a casino is built at Suffolk Downs, Wonderland could be converted to a logistical support facility or a warehouse for the casino. Another possibility is that Wonderland could be converted into a hotel, residential development, or a regional mall.

Meanwhile, the Committee to Protect Dogs is on a mission to drum up widespread support for the measure to ban dog racing, which would affect Wonderland and Raynham Park, the state's other dog track. A similar measure was defeated in 2000, and the state highest court ruled in 2006 that the wording of another ban proposal was invalid, preventing the measure from going to voters that year.

Wonderland owner Charles Sarkis said earlier this week that "right now it's business as usual. I can't tell you what it will look like in six months, because I don't know what's going to happen."

Customer Mike Russo said he has visited Wonderland regularly for the past 30 years and remembers when "this place was jumping.

"They had to send out kids with stacks of programs to sell them to people in their cars backed up all the way to Route 16," said Russo, 55, of Wilmington. "It was the best track in the country. People nowadays, they want it fast, they want it immediate, so they buy scratch tickets."