By T. D. Thornton
Hawthorne Race Course, whose management abruptly and prematurely ended the 2026 racing season two weeks ago, then mandated that backstretch residents vacate the property in advance of a pending Chapter 11 bankruptcy sale, has applied for 2027 race dates with the Illinois Racing Board (IRB).
The application, with a proposed Mar. 27-Oct. 31 season, caught representatives with the Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association (ITHA) off guard when it was announced Tuesday by the IRB.
“It comes as a surprise, being that there's a closing on the Hawthorne property set for after the first of September,” ITHA president Chris Block told TDN in a phone interview. “And also a little surprising that they're applying, considering they still owe the horsemen $1.3 million in purses.
“I don't know where, if you don't have a racetrack, how do you [move forward with such an application] if, in fact, the closing takes place?” Block continued. “Unless they're thinking the closing may not take place in September.
“But, with that said, if it doesn't take place, there's no money to keep the track going. It's my understanding they're broke,” Block said.
Tim Carey, president of the Chicago-area track that has been owned by several generations of his family for the past 117 years, did not respond to TDN's request for an interview or an explanation of Hawthorne's dates request prior to deadline for this story.
A similar message sent to a Hawthorne publicist Aug. 4 also went unanswered.
The Stickney, Illinois, track–the last Thoroughbred venue on the once-robust Chicago circuit–sought federal bankruptcy protection Feb. 27 to try and restructure between $100 and $500 million in debt.
The track is on a court-approved schedule to be sold for $90 million to a Delaware shell company that has not disclosed a use for the property beyond indicating that it does not intend to use the land for horse racing.
TDN learned of Hawthorne's dates request via an emailed press release sent Tuesday morning by the IRB's executive director, Domenic DiCera.
Immediately after receiving the press release, TDN sent an email to DiCera asking if he could provide context on the dates request while also asking for a copy of Hawthorne's full application.
In reply, TDN got an auto-reply from DiCera's email account stating that he'd be unavailable until later in the week.
Hawthorne, which ran Standardbred meets under the name Suburban Downs until the company bounced at least $580,000 in checks earlier this year and had its harness license suspended by the IRB, also requested Standardbred dates spanning Jan. 2-Dec. 26, 2027.
Are the license applications part of a strategic move to preserve an asset for whichever version of the current ownership emerges from the bankruptcy process? Allowing the permits to lapse could reduce their value, even if Hawthorne ends up with no viable location to conduct the race meets.
With Hawthorne executives mum on the reasoning behind the applications and the IRB's executive director unavailable, TDN asked Block to speculate on what function it might serve Hawthorne to keep a Thoroughbred racing license in the pipeline.
“Unless there was some emergency version of a dates order that would come out after the first of the year if they did find someone to fund the meet there for next year, I don't know why they would do that,” Block said. “It could be a placeholder for something like that, but I don't know the dynamics.”
On July 29, the ITHA filed a motion in United States Bankruptcy Court, Northern District of Illinois (Eastern Division), seeking an order to recover $711,554 in unpaid purses from race dates in July, plus $603,069 for purses previously earned but not withdrawn from the horsemen's bookkeeper account maintained by Hawthorne.
A separate court filing in mid-July stated that 447 horses, 337 adults and 147 children were living on Hawthorne's backstretch, and that all were facing an Aug. 31 deadline to vacate the premises.
TDN asked Block to provide an update on the moving-out process.
“There were some trainers that moved out to different racetracks [after the July 19 final races] and took some of the employees living on the Hawthorne backstretch with them. And then [the exodus] slowed down quite a bit. We've had, from the numbers that we see right now, about six occupants relocating in the last week or 10 days,” Block said.
“There are probably about 215 horses still there. That number will probably dwindle down by the middle of August. But we're very concerned that it will be a challenge for these people to find housing.
“A lot of these people have never rented before, so there's no credit history that they have, number one. And number two, they're going to have to come up with a security deposit and first month's rent, and most of these people have lost their jobs over the last month or so.
“The ITHA is doing all we possibly can. We're having a housing fair on Friday [with] some charities that are going to come in and try to help facilitate some movement for these people to find different living accommodations. And then there are some trainers that are still at Hawthorne that are going to be moving within the next two weeks, and will probably take some of those people with them,” Block said.
“But we believe there's going to be a group of them that, I'm afraid, aren't going to be able to find somewhere to go. And those are the ones that are going to really, really be our challenges to find housing for.
“So it's a work in progress. Every day is a new challenge. But we're doing our best to work through it and hope to find help for as many people as we can,” Block said.
In addition to Hawthorne's dual-breed meet requests, Fairmount Park, 280 miles southwest of Hawthorne and just over the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri, requested 2027 dates that span Apr. 6-Nov. 24.
The IRB has set a Sept. 16 meeting to decide on the pending dates applications.
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