Still in the running

Richard Fields grew up in the Bronx but dreamed of being a cowboy. "I wanted to be Hopalong Cassidy -- I've never gotten past it," he said.

Today Fields, a 61-year-old multimillionaire businessman, has hundreds of horses on a ranch in Wyoming he calls Jackson Land and Cattle.

His biggest business success was as codeveloper of a pair of successful Seminole Hard Rock Café Hotel & Casinos resorts in Florida. And in April he became controlling owner of Suffolk Downs, the New England horse track that has been on life support for years, some say doomed.

Fields says he bought into Suffolk Downs because he believes in the future of horse racing and trainers, jockeys, and the other people who support it, and he wants to keep it alive. "I only do projects where people say it can't be done," he said in a recent interview in the Topsider Room, overlooking the oval track in East Boston and Revere. "This is a big one, baby . . . I've made a big bet here."

But in a few short months Fields's big, expensive plans to save racing at Suffolk Downs have been overshadowed by a fast-moving debate on Beacon Hill over legalizing gambling in Massachusetts.

The racetrack has been frequently cited as an obvious location for a future casino and entertainment complex. In addition, Fields's background includes being a partner with Las Vegas mogul Steve Wynn in a bid to run New York State's horse-racing franchise.

"I'm not totally silly. Of course we would want to have gaming," said Fields. "You'd have larger purses, you'd have better horses."

Fields has had initial meetings with local and state officials on the prospect of gaming in Massachusetts. Casino revenues could finance one of his big goals, bringing horse-breeding back to the Commonwealth, as well as pumping financial oxygen into the track itself.

But, he said, casinos would have to be part of a larger resort and entertainment destination package for it to work. "You can't just put in slot machines and go, voila."

Unlike some of his Suffolk Downs partners, Fields said he believes horse-racing can make it without gambling, and he has started spending money to upgrade Suffolk Downs facilities. His greatest challenges are competition from the state Lottery and out-of-state casino resorts -- and making the Sport of Kings appeal to a younger generation that is just fine doing its gaming, if not gambling, on a computer.

"I need that 13-year-old and the 10-year-old, or I'm dead," said Fields.

He said he takes pointers from Wynn. He once stayed unannounced at the Wynn Las Vegas resort and talked to people about their experiences.

"You know why they love him? It's all about the customer," Fields said. Rather than just luring people with a promotion or giveaway, he said, Wynn has made customer service "a way of life."

"We're going to translate those ideas into horse racing."

Suffolk Downs opened in 1935 and once hosted 25,000 people a day betting and enjoying the excitement, big purses, and sleek horses that also raced at top tracks like Santa Anita and Saratoga. But attendance has dwindled, and even the famed Massachusetts Handicap, which put Suffolk Downs on the racing map, has been suspended for two years.

Fields swept into Boston this month and appeared at the Four Seasons Hotel Boston to announce that the MassCap would return, in September, with a respectable $500,000 purse. Outside, a thoroughbred horse with jockey astride paced on the sidewalk of Boylston Street.

Fields's early business success was in another corner of entertainment -- music and comedy. After attending Boston University, he managed entertainers, including comedian Kevin Meaney and Joy Behar of ABC-TV's "The View." He was part-owner of the comedy club chain Catch a Rising Star, worked for a New York private equity firm, and then was a real estate and development consultant.

In 2005, Business Week magazine called him "Trump's Angry Apprentice," because after he worked for Donald Trump's organization for several years and then codeveloped the Florida casinos with someone else, The Donald sued him. A billion dollars is said to be at stake.

Fields's love of horses was rekindled when he visited a friend's ranch in New Mexico about 20 years ago and saddled up. "I had a ride up a hill and down a mountain. I knew where I wanted to be."

He is also a philanthropist and environmentalist. Fields and his wife, Meeka, support a foundation that advocates for missing and exploited children, he's bought land for preservation in Wyoming, and he is involved with classroom and biofuel programs that promote agriculture.

He is engaged with singer Willie Nelson -- "Willie educates me" -- in promoting biodiesel fuels, and is on the board of Farm Aid, which Nelson helped start to save the family farm.

Fields said what ties all his pet causes and projects together is a sense that life in America has changed, for the worse. "It sounds melodramatic, but we're losing the core of this country," he said.

The Suffolk Downs "family," he said, faces the same threat as the family farmer. "It's the last thoroughbred track in New England. It's like local farms and ranches -- Ma and Pa. They're committed to the land, to the animals. I feel obligated to keep that going."

That passion, plus his business success, persuaded Suffolk Downs partner Joseph O'Donnell to approve of Fields's purchase of a large share in the racetrack, after spurning offers from others over the years.

"What he wants to do here is going to be so good," said O'Donnell. "It isn't a slots parlor. He's a unique human being. He's made an awful lot of money and given an awful lot of money away. It portends well for us."

Fields's partner in his firm Coastal Development, Bill Mulrow, said Fields spent nearly a decade wooing the Seminole tribe in Florida to build the Seminole Hard Rock Casino resorts in Hollywood and Tampa, which have annual combined revenues of more than a billion dollars a year.

"Richard, through his own tenacity and doggedness, got the deal done," said Mulrow. "If he has an idea, he sees it through," said Mulrow. "He has a special quality. I can't tell if it's his enthusiasm or his intelligence."

Neither Wynn nor representatives of the Seminole Tribe responded to requests for a comment.

If horse racing can't be saved at Suffolk Downs, with or without casinos, the 170 acres on the coast would be a prime site for the kind of mixed-use projects that one of the track's other big owners, New York-based developer Vornado, specializes in.

On the first Saturday in May, as Suffolk Downs ran its first races of the season, the track carried a simulcast of the Kentucky Derby and drew a fairly good crowd of almost 18,000. Amid a celebratory atmosphere, Fields said he was encouraged by an early meeting with some of the track's 1,500 employees.

"I said let's do a wish list, paint this, fix that, flowers," he said. "There's a sense of optimism. I wrote a check."

Thomas C. Palmer Jr. can be reached at tpalmer@globe.com.