Riding a winner
With ups, downs and a plan for the future Remington Park is celebrating 20 years
With ups, downs and a plan for the future Remington Park is celebrating 20 years

By Steve Lackmeyer

Published: August 29, 2008

Donnie Von Hemel admits that just a few years ago, things looked bad enough at Remington Park that he could see a time when he would no longer race at the track he had returned to faithfully since it opened in 1988.

His costs were up 30 percent, but the purse his horses were competing for was down about 75 percent. Battered by increased competition from Indian casinos, the lottery and simulcast racing, Remington Park was on the verge of closing its doors.

But, with the track celebrating its 20th anniversary this weekend, those uncertain times now are just a memory.

"It's been great,” said Von Hemel, whose horse ‘Daring Child' was racing in a thoroughbred meet Thursday evening. "Our stable has out about $1 million (in purses) this last year.”

When Scott Wells was hired as general manager at Remington Park four years ago, he was fated to oversee either its closing or its rebirth. Owner Magna Entertainment had lost $20 million, and everything hinged on voters approving the addition of a casino in 2004.

"That was the only thing that saved us,” Wells said. "Otherwise, it would have closed in January of 2005. It couldn't have continued to lose money.”

As much as the track had fallen out of popularity a few years ago, it was considered a key to revitalizing a depressed city when it was first recruited in the mid-1980s.

Lee Allan Smith, chairman of the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber, traveled to Youngstown, Ohio, with a delegation that included Gov. George Nigh and Mayor Andy Coats to visit with racetrack developer Edward J. DeBartolo Sr. to address concerns the city might not support the project.

Smith also arranged visits between DeBartolo and the city's most powerful civic leaders.

After those discussions, DeBartolo flew over Oklahoma City and spotted the same tract of land that Smith had advocated — property at Martin Luther King and Interstate 44 then controlled by the Oklahoma City Zoological Trust.

The city's fortunes were among the worst they had been since the Great Depression — the oil bust had resulted in a wave of bank failures, home foreclosures, bankruptcies and a drop in population and jobs.

But DeBartolo was ready to wager that better times were ahead.

"It was not a pretty picture at the time,” Smith said. "This was a real shot in the arm.”

Von Hemel was wowed by the crowds that showed up for the track's opening and impressed by DeBartolo's infusion of $1 million into the opening meet — money he never recovered.

The track saw crowds of about 7,000 people on weekdays and averaged 15,000 on weekends.

"At the time it compared very favorably because of the facility that was built and who built it — the DeBartolo family,” Von Hemel said. "It looked like Oklahoma would make a go of it.”

DeBartolo's death in 1994 couldn't have hit at a worse time for Remington Park. When the track opened in 1988, it was the only legal betting in the state. Casinos were restricted to New Jersey and Nevada, and entertainment options were just a few years off from exploding into what they are today.

Von Hemel said DeBartolo's death was followed by family squabbles that led to the departure of the track's original general manager, David Vance, and coincided with the rise of Indian casinos.

Attendance plunged and purse values fell. The park sold to Magna Entertainment, which then selected Wells to change the park's fortunes.

"There were weeds in the parking lot; the place didn't look any good,” Wells said. "It was pretty dismal, the level of business we were seeing.”

With the passage of a law permitting "racinos,” Magna invested $64 million, including conversion of a closed north grandstand into a casino and renovations to the property. Paid parking and admission were eliminated.

Magna has yet to fully recoup its investment, Wells said, but the park is a shining star in the struggling company's portfolio. And that's why it has been up for sale the past two years.

Wells suspects a sale might have closed by now — if not for a publicity campaign waged by the Shawnee Tribe as it tries to gain permission to build a casino less than two miles north of the track along Interstate 35.

Even so, Wells said, Remington Park's future is secure.

"I have a strong sense people in Oklahoma and Oklahoma City really want Remington Park to be a success,” Wells said. "It's something they were proud of before, and they want to be proud of again.”

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