Birmingham Race Course

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Turf Club logo.jpg

The Birmingham Race Course (originally the Birmingham Turf Club) is a former horse and greyhound racetrack which offers simulcast wagering for greyhound and thoroughbred horse races and electronic "historical horse racing" gambling machines. The 330-acre site is located on Derby Parkway off John Rogers Drive in Birmingham's Liberty Highlands neighborhood.

The Turf Club opened on March 3, 1987 and hosted live horse races until 1995 and live greyhound racing from 1993 to 2020.

History

The project was intended as a showcase for thoroughbred horse racing in the Deep South, expected to draw crowds from neighboring states for high-stakes parimutuel betting. The city sited the project on a parcel on 7,000 acres of newly-annexed territory northeast of downtown, accessible from the recently-opened I-459 corridor. Legislation making the enterprise possible was pushed through by John Rogers (earning him the honor of having the entrance road named for him) and Fred Horn. Other investors included Judy Thompson of Thompson Tractor Company, who served as the Turf Club's general manager and Sidney Smyer Jr.

Approved in 1985 and backed in part by municipal bonds for infrastructure to the site, the 275,000 square-foot teal-accented clubhouse and other facilities were constructed over the next two years by Robins & Morton at a cost of $85 million. Architects for the project were Ewing, Cole, Cherry & Parksy, Inc. of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In addition to video-equipped indoor and outdoor grandstands, the clubhouse featured several lounges and an 800-seat white tablecloth restaurant dubbed "The Ascot". Georgia's Dogwood Stables brought as many as 30 horses to the Club's stables.

Ed Hall, director of the Birmingham Convention and Vistors Bureau reported that the project was expected to bring $250 million to the area in its first year, creating 1,000 jobs and triggering investments in hotels and restaurants. In his opinion the Turf Club would be "as important to Birmingham as Disney World was to Orlando."1. Jockey Willie Shoemaker was hired as pitchman for the project, recording TV commercials on horseback from the track's winner's circle to air regionally.

The track opened to the public with the Birmingham Inaugural Stakes on March 3, 1987. Through 13,000 fans came for the opening event, only 4,500 showed up the following night, and the track never drew the large crowds and large wagers its backers expected, losing up to $100,000 a day in the weeks following. A record crowd of 17,562 for the inaugural Alabama Derby on April 11 proved to be the lone high mark.

Immediately the track's owners, as well as public officials who supported the project, tried to re-brand the Turf Club as "your course", acknowledging criticism that the track was perceived as elitist. Entry fees were dropped from $2.50 to $1.00 and billboards calling the facility "your track" were erected in less affluent neighborhoods. Nevertheless, by the end of its inaugural 175-day season the track had lost $50 million and the operators filed for bankruptcy reorganization in November 1988.

Owners suggested adding dog-racing to the track, but a referendum to legalize it was defeated. The facility was sold out of bankruptcy to Delaware North, which re-instituted thoroughbred racing a year later. The track re-opened on May 26, 1989 as the Birmingham Race Course and hosted a record crowd of over 15,000 on that Friday night. Crowds and wagers again dwindled. Delaware North packed up in 1991. That summer, "Guns N' Roses" played a concert at the venue.

Design

The Birmingham Turf Club initially offered a 1-mile dirt-surface thoroughbred track and a 7/8-mile turf course. Managers and designers took a number of lessons from the recently-opened Canterbury Downs in Shakopee, Minnesota.

There were 6,500 paved parking spaces and an additional graded field for overflow parking. The clubhouse featured a paddock and parade ring out front, and a grandstand with a capacity of 20,000 inside-and-out to the rear.

The clubhouse held 288 pari-mutuel betting windows on four levels. The lowest track-side level housed a gift shop, information booth, visitor's bureau and food court, as well as the 1,000-seat "The Doncaster" casual grill. A mezzanine level housed private banquet and dining areas operated by the Newmarket Group. The open grandstand level had indoor reserved bleacher seating and concession stands. The top floor, or clubhouse level, provided access to clubhouse seating and housed the Longchamp Restaurant and the 500-seat Ascot Dining Room, both overlooking the track. Proper attire was required for the clubhouse level.

Gallery

  • Program cover

    Program cover

  • Architect's renderings

    Architect's renderings

  • Aerial view

    Aerial view

  • Entrance facade

    Entrance facade

McGregor's tenure

Greyhound-racing magnate Milton McGregor incorporated a Jefferson County Racing Association which bought the track from AmSouth Bank in 1992 and, following a successful referendum, began hosting greyhound races between horse races on a smaller infield track. With the addition of dog races, the track set a single day record betting handle of $1,726,588 on May 1, 1993. Annual total handle for the race course peaked that year at $163 million ($116 million of which was placed on dog races), but declined every year after.

In 1995 McGregor abandoned live horse racing, and the last such race run on the track was on June 1 of that year. By 2013 the overall handle had declined to $53 million. Continued operations have been subsidized by electronic bingo at the track and at McGregor's other facilities. Patrons were still able to place bets on simulcast races from other tracks. As early as 1997 McGregor had petitioned the Birmingham Racing Commission turned over funds from an escrow account it had been managing with a percentage of simulcast revenues intended to benefit horse racing. The Commission based its 3-1 decision on the need to preserve operations at the race course in the wake of the loss of electronic bingo from McGregor's other properties. The Commission provided further cash infusions to the track in 2010 and 2012, including an $800,000 payout to make good on property taxes which had gone unpaid.

McGregor has pushed for other forms of gambling at the race course. Bills allowing referendums on casino-style gambling have been regularly introduced without success. Quincy's MegaSweeps, an "internet café" utilizing custom-built machines from Innovative Sweepstakes Systems, opened in late 2005. The operation was shut down after a few days by the Jefferson County Sheriffs Office. Jefferson County Circuit Court judge Scott Vowell later ruled that the video machines, which only offered an appearance of chance when they notified customers of winning sweepstakes tickets, were in fact legal under loopholes in Alabama law. On appeal, the Alabama Supreme Court overturned Vowell's ruling saying that because customers had to purchase the cards, that the differences in how the game operated were immaterial. The United States Supreme Court declined to review that ruling.

The former internet café and sweepstakes was renamed "Club Quincy", and continued to operate as a nightclub. In 2010 the Birmingham Racing Commission voted 3-1 to allow the track to use funds set aside to benefit horse racing to make improvements to the facility and to suspend contributions of a percentage of the total handle toward a Commission-managed charity fund. The actions were considered necessary in order to preserve the operations of the race course in the wake of the loss of electronic bingo from McGregor's other properties.

With revenues continuing to stagnate, McGregor's Jefferson County Racing Association returned to the Commission asking for $800,000 to pay for property taxes, which had been unpaid since 2011. The Alabama Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association's David Harrington opposed the bailout, but it passed by a 4-1 vote.

McGregor died in 2018. Montgomery veterinarian Lewis Benefield, the husband of McGregor's daughter, Cindy, took over as operator of the Birmingham Race Course and Victoryland.

In 2019 the Birmingham Race Course was still holding live greyhound racing, but was making more money from licensing the video to foreign gambling services than it was taking from on-site betting. In October of that year the track installed 301 electronic "historical horse racing" gambling machines that operate like slot machines, but technically enable users to wager on the results of previously-run horse races. The machines provide anonymized information about the entrants, allowing the bets to be considered a test of "skill", but not names or specific statistics that would make it possible to identify past winners. The number of such machines in use at the track subsequently grew to around 1,000.

The Birmingham Race Course stopped running live greyhound races in April 2020.

Wind Creek Hospitality

In November 2024 it was announced that Wind Creek Hospitality of Atmore, Escambia County, the gaming and hospitality entity for the federally-recognized Poarch Band of Creek Indians, had agreed to purchase the race course from the the Benefields. The purchase closed in April 2025.

In communication to The Birmingham News reporter William Thornton, Wind Creek executive vice president Arthur Mothershed anticipated that even if no enabling legislation for casino-style gambling passed the Alabama State Legislature, the the company would likely renovate the property as some type of resort with the same types of games already licensed. CEO Stephanie Bryan added that if the laws were updated, that the company was interested in developing "a very high-scale resort with a lot of amenities" at the site.

See also

Notes

  1. quoted in Dwyer-1987

References

External links

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