Turf Paradise will not open for fall racing, future is uncertain

The outgoing management of Turf Paradise said Tuesday it will not start the 2023-24 meet on time this fall, leaving it for new owners to decide what to do next.

“Turf Paradise Race Course announced today that the Phoenix track will not open for its live race meet in early November,” according to a notice posted to the track website and on social media Tuesday afternoon. “For the past several years, with the exception of COVID in 2020, the track opened its live meet in conjunction with the simulcast of the two-day Breeders’ Cup championship on the first weekend of November. The meet then extended 130 live race days thru the simulcast of the Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday in May.”

Phoenix businessman Jerry Simms, who has been the owner since January 2000, has been in the process since April of selling the 67-year-old track to Southern California developer James Watson’s CT Realty. Watson recently said delays in closing the sale meant he would not take over the property until late this year, so the soonest racing could resume is January.

“That’s not to preclude that the track wouldn’t be open January through May,” Turf Paradise general manager Vince Francia told Daily Racing Form. “We’re just not going to make the usual opening date.”

Watson said during the spring that financial help from the Arizona state government would determine whether and for how many years he might continue to run horse races at Turf Paradise.

There has been no racing in Arizona since closing day May 6 at Turf Paradise. Arizona Downs, the Prescott track that hosted 26 days of Saturday and Monday racing last summer, did not have the money to apply for summer dates this year.

The two Arizona tracks were financially stifled by a nearly three-year simulcast dispute with 1/ST’s Monarch Content Management that finally was resolved in December.