Fields leads Suffolk rebirth
The grandstand was always packed. Every day at Suffolk Downs was an event when the East Boston track was in its prime, as crowds came to spend the day watching the country's top thoroughbreds.
The track, which opened in 1935, has been in a slow, steady decline, hitting bottom last year when the stands were nearly deserted, the stables were shabby, and horsemen and trainers were scarce. It looked to many of the discouraged crew on the backside that the track might not have another meeting.
But on April 3, New York businessman Richard Fields, the primary developer of the Seminole Hard Rock Resort & Casino locations in Tampa and Hollywood, Fla., bought a significant interest in the track (estimated to be between 40 percent and 50 percent). Yesterday, under a blue sky bright with hope, riders, trainers, and horsemen were settling in on the backside, full of an energy that has been missing at Suffolk for years.
Fields was on hand, primarily to meet and greet employees as they prepared for today's Opening Day, and to pass on the word that he expects to spend the time, energy, and money to restore the luster to the historic track.
Fields knows that gaming revenue is vital for today's racetracks and said he would support a move to allow casino gambling in Massachusetts, a topic Governor Deval Patrick recently convened a group to study.
"Technology has given us opportunities to make the product more exciting; we have to work to make it more accessible," said Fields. "Most people don't know how to pick a horse; they do it by color, by number. We have to make it more understandable. I've looked at this for the last few years and we've made a decision as a company and as a family to recommit and to reformat racing [at Suffolk]."
Encouraging words from Fields, increased purses, and a few coats of paint on the barns, as well as smoothed-out roads inside the facility, have Suffolk veterans expecting good things.
"When I first came here, when I was 18, it was packed," said jockey Tammi Piermarini, who has been riding at Suffolk for 23 years. "You couldn't move in the grandstand. You had bigger outfits [trainers] in the main stables. They were advertising more.
"Everything has dwindled. We used to have days with all female riders, or with one race full of grays. We used to have mile-and-a-quarter races. But they went where the money was better and bigger."
Trainer Lori Lockhart was one of the first to believe Suffolk was in for a revival, after she got an advance report on the new ownership.
"It looks kind of good," said Lockhart. "I drive for a limousine company, too, and I picked up a guy at the airport who was in Aruba, and he was in the water there with Fields. He didn't know [Fields's] name, but he said he just bought 45 percent of Suffolk Downs and he was going to build it up."
Piermarini said bringing slot machines to Suffolk is a necessity if the track is to compete. "It would save a lot of jobs here and bring back the crowd," she said. "This is home. I was panicking [last year], feeling this might be our last year."
Piermarini's husband, John, is her agent, and the couple has two small children, Izabella and Johnny. That makes it tough to maintain what Piermarini calls the gypsy life of a jockey. She'd like nothing better than to see Suffolk return to racing year-round.
As Piermarini looked around yesterday, she found reasons to be optimistic. "If something wasn't going to happen here," she said, "they wouldn't be doing this stuff. Already this year there have been some significant changes, improvements on the backside. They've started working on the grandstand -- and I saw flowers out already!"
Winston Thompson, who won his third consecutive Suffolk jockey title in 2006, is full of hope, too. He has been riding at the track for 20 years, watching it crumble around him.
"It goes downhill," he said. "It was the worst last year. We came here and there was nobody here. The trainers didn't know if there was going to be racing. There's been no guarantee of a future the last couple of years. If purses go up, all the horsemen we lost will come back. We won't have to leave our houses and our families if we can race here year-round."
Fields said he intends to hold the Massachusetts Handicap, the track's premier event, which has been canceled the last two years because of poor business.
"To me, a bigger crowd matters," said Lockhart. "People still love to see horses run. When the nicer horses are here, people come. You can hear the crowd cheering. Now, riders most of the time just hear someone cursing at them because they lost to a long shot." 