Can the Preakness’ venue save a downtrodden Baltimore neighborhood?
-
Michael A. Fletcher, ESPN
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott’s childhood memories of the Preakness Stakes are more about the hardships the famed horse race imposed on his Park Heights neighborhood than any benefits the community reaped from the event. Sure, some enterprising residents and business owners made a few bucks selling water, letting fans park on their lawns and even charging for the use of their bathroom as throngs descended on the aging Pimlico Race Course for the second leg of racing’s Triple Crown.
But mostly, Scott said, he associates the Preakness with choking traffic, onerous parking restrictions and indiscriminate police sweeps aimed at making outsiders feel safe. “On the day before Preakness, you wouldn’t even go outside because they would come and roust people off the corner,” Scott recalled. “When I was growing up, we felt like Preakness was in Park Heights but not for Park Heights.”
Maryland political leaders are wagering $400 million that they can change the decades-old, arm’s-length relationship between the track and the neighborhood. The state legislature has approved a risky plan to use the struggling sport of horse racing to improve struggling Park Heights, a community living in the shadow of Pimlico and long burdened by rampant poverty, crime and disinvestment.
Last week, Gov. Wes Moore signed legislation to let a state-created nonprofit buy crumbling Pimlico from its private owners for $1, raze it and rebuild it with the neighborhood in mind as a profit-sharing partner. Before the community gets its cut, though, the state is obligated to pay $3 million annually to the current owners for rights to the Preakness, plus 2% of betting proceeds from the race — roughly another $2 million. The state also will use some of the $400 million outlay to build a separate horse training facility at one of several proposed sites in the Maryland suburbs.
With meager or no profits to show in recent years, a big question is how much would be left for Park Heights.
State officials said a big part of the track’s problem is its run-down condition. Pimlico dates back to 1870 and is widely recognized as the nation’s second-oldest race course. The facility is showing its age, having not undergone a major renovation in more than a half century. The clubhouse’s ceiling tiles are faded and water-stained. There is no working kitchen, and five years ago, a 6,700-seat section of its grandstand was closed because of safety concerns.
“It is not like anybody’s sneaking out and going to the race track, because it’s not inviting,” said Greg Cross, chair of the Maryland Thoroughbred Racetrack Operating Authority, which developed the Pimlico rebuilding plan. “I mean, why would you want to go there? Our task is to put the sexy back into Pimlico.” Through the years, Maryland lawmakers have made other efforts to prop up horse racing, but Cross said they amounted to “half-steps” that neither elevated the track-going experience nor helped the surrounding community. This time, he said, things will be different.
The commitment to rebuild the track will keep Baltimore as the home of the Preakness — a race that officials long worried could flee the city, and perhaps even the state. Pimlico also will become Maryland’s thoroughbred racing hub, with a new synthetic track touted as the safest surface for horses. Races would be run 140 days a year, up from the 23 dates in 2023. The goal is to uplift the sport’s sagging image and attract a new generation of horse racing fans with modern amenities, including a new clubhouse and a modern sportsbook.
For the community, there will be a 1,000-person event space that could host proms and other large parties, which officials say will create a new income stream for Pimlico. The project includes $10 million in housing for track workers. And Pimlico’s infield would be available for community events like festivals and concerts. There is also the possibility of a hotel, parking garages, retail and other development on the site. The plan calls for allocating 10% of the track’s profits to the neighborhood and exposing local students to racing and hospitality careers.
“The state is betting on itself — and we’re going all in,” Moore responded to an email query. He labeled the investment a “transformative deal” that would benefit both Pimlico and the local community.
Such urban-focused sports and entertainment developments around the country have yielded mixed results. Some investments have worked, but others haven’t paid off for surrounding neighborhoods. And there’s always the danger that success could bring unwanted gentrification. Nevertheless, community leaders agree with Moore that it’s worth a try.
Moore’s optimistic outlook contrasts with the currently bleak state of horse racing, suggesting that Maryland’s bet on Pimlico is far from a sure thing. The sport’s popularity has been declining, with the industry reporting the number of races, fans and betting revenue dwindling across the country as other legal gambling options proliferate. The danger racing poses to horses is a major hurdle in the sport’s bid to generate a new fan base. An estimated 2,000 horses die each year from racing-related injuries, according to Horseracing Wrongs, which advocates abolition of the sport.
In a 2019 poll commissioned by The Jockey Club, an industry group, nearly seven in 10 likely voters called horse fatalities a “very important” issue for the sport.
Attendance at Maryland’s two thoroughbred tracks, Laurel Race Course and Pimlico, was down 66% between 2013 and 2022, even as the number of racing days increased, according to the Maryland Racing Commission, which oversees the state’s horse racing industry. Over the past decade, the tracks averaged just 2,500 fans per day, not including the coronavirus years of 2020 and 2021, according to a state consultant’s report.
Meanwhile, the Stronach Group, the private owner of Pimlico and Laurel, has consistently reported to state officials that it is losing money. Over the past two years, the company said that it did not turn a profit on its most popular event, the Preakness.
So if horse racing is bleeding fans and money, how can it help Park Heights?
Pimlico Race Course sprawls over 140 acres of northwest Baltimore. The grounds are surrounded by tall fences, lined with trees and hedges, offering only glimpses of the concentric racing ovals and bucolic infield from the surrounding streets. The effect has been to wall off the community from what for years was a major economic asset. Pimlico is the most famous building in the neighborhood, but it stands apart from the rest of Park Heights.
The community is home to about 22,000 people, and for generations it has struggled with a host of challenges, including violent crime, widespread drug addiction, truancy and substandard housing.
“When I was a kid, every corner from Park Circle [on the neighborhood’s southern end] up to Rodgers [on the northern end, near Pimlico], was its own different drug shop,” said Scott, who recently turned 40. “The reason I am in public service is because the first time I saw someone shot, I was outside playing basketball at like 6 or 7 years old.”
There are many fine blocks in the neighborhood, some lined with stone-front row homes and tidy lawns. New development, including several apartment buildings and streets filled with rebuilt townhomes, have sprung up in recent years. But more obvious are the hundreds of decaying buildings and acres of vacant lots that scar Park Heights. Some of the vacant land extends for entire blocks, in part the result of a city effort that demolished more than 400 structures in the area since 2010, according to local development officials.
The commercial strips closest to Pimlico are mostly a collection of convenience stores, barber shops, carry-outs and small West Indian restaurants.
Community leaders have long complained that the track does nothing for local businesses. The sprinkling of racing fans who show up during the short spring meet are virtually invisible outside Pimlico’s gates. Even on Preakness weekend, when tens of thousands of racing fans stream into the track, betting millions of dollars, the action does not spill over appreciably into the neighborhood.
“Here’s a fun fact that is a challenge for me sometimes to swallow …” said Yolanda E. Jiggetts, chief executive officer of Park Heights Renaissance, a community development organization. “These businesses in Park Heights actually lose money historically during the Preakness.”
Elizabeth Wiseman, board co-chair of the Pimlico Community Redevelopment Compact, explained that during Preakness it is impossible to park on the street. Plus, she said, few Preakness goers even think to spend time or money in the neighborhood. “There is not the type of synergy we’d like to see in the future where people are walking fluidly from the track to the stores and restaurants,” she said.
Community leaders say they aren’t solely relying on the Pimlico project to uplift the neighborhood. A rebuilt Pimlico could be the catalyst Park Heights needs to boost its image and speed ongoing improvements, but in recent years, Jiggetts’ organization also has guided the building of several new housing developments and deployed a team of workers that cuts overgrown lawns, cleans alleys and annually removes more than a hundred tons of trash dumped in the neighborhood.
The group has also assembled a list of initiatives it hopes to complete over the next five years, including giving home-preservation grants to nearly 2,000 residents, launching new job training programs and developing additional new housing.
In all, the wish list of upgrades carries a price tag of more than $100 million, and community leaders believe a rebuilt Pimlico can help generate the momentum — and money — needed to fulfill it.
“It is something much larger than just horse racing,” said Desiree Eades, a real estate and development consultant for Park Heights Renaissance. “That’s why development [of the track] is so important.”
After years of feeling locked out of the business of the race track, many say they are encouraged that the neighborhood’s perspective is finally being considered alongside the needs of horse racing.
“For people in a community that most of the time feels like they’re not heard, they were heard,” said Bishop Troy Randall, founder of @The House, a social service program. “And not only heard, they were respected.”
Still, there is cause for skepticism. Given the declining popularity of horse racing, the fear is that Pimlico’s facelift might be coming too late to help Park Heights.
May 11, a Saturday, was the third day of Pimlico’s spring meet, aided by pleasant weather with the sun peeking through the clouds. Yet hardly anybody was at the track. All but a handful of the long lines of betting windows were closed. The couple hundred horse players in the place were able to spread out at banquet tables and benches facing simulcast screens and red picnic tables lined up near the rail next to the track’s home stretch.
“When we were pulling up to the parking lot, it was a little bleak to see so many empty parking spaces,” said Atlas Pyke, who was at the track with his mother, Joyce Lombardi. “We basically drove right up to the rail.” Both Pyke and Lombardi said they hoped a rebuilt track would draw more people to Pimlico. But the reality may be that horse racing is simply not popular anymore, they said.
“I’m not sure that it’s a sport that everyone can relate to or even condone,” said Lombardi, who grew up riding thoroughbreds in rural Maryland. “It’s not great for horses.”
Maryland’s equine industry generates $2 billion annually in economic impact, state officials say, with $600 million of it tied to horse racing. The industry is widely regarded as a cultural pillar of Maryland, which Cross, of the racetrack authority, said has more horses per capita than any other state in the country. Overall, the equine business is responsible for a quarter of Maryland’s greenspace, he added.
“There’s a disproportionate state impact in the continuation of the business,” Cross said. “But in order to have that economic impact be sustainable and continue, you need a big investment of capital. And the returns on the capital just aren’t enough for a private, for-profit operator to put in $400 million to $500 million, as we’re about to do.”
Under terms of the deal, the Preakness will stay at Pimlico this year and next, then move 21 miles southwest to Laurel while the facility is rebuilt. The hope is to return the event to Pimlico by 2027. After that, Laurel — located on more than 200 acres of prime land in the prosperous suburbs between Baltimore and Washington. D.C. — is slated to close.
Maryland officials expressed confidence they will be able to do what the Stronach Group could not in recent years: make money with Pimlico. “We think it will be more than profitable,” Cross said.
A financially healthy Pimlico that shares its bounty with the surrounding neighborhood is something local leaders are counting on.
Long before running the local development board, Jiggetts grew up in Park Heights. As a little girl, she would accompany her grandmother to the track so frequently that she got to know many of the people who worked there. Some of them would keep an eye on her while her grandmother placed bets. The track taught Jiggetts to love horses, but it also taught her the dangers of gambling. She says her grandmother fell into debt because of losses at the track.
“You know, that was her favorite pastime but also her addiction,” Jiggetts said. Now, she hopes the track can give something back. She wants to see people coming to Pimlico visiting local coffee shops, or dining at local restaurants after the races.
Banking on horse racing to help struggling Park Heights might be a long shot, but for many people from the neighborhood it looks like their best bet.
“You can see that stuff’s starting to happen,” Scott said. “People want to come back. Investment is happening. Reopening the rec center. Renovating the pool for the first time since it was built. Doing all of those things. Pimlico will just help us to unlock that.”
-
Mark Schlabach, ESPN Senior Writer
TIGER, Ga. — Georgia‘s former starting quarterback, Carson Beck, rolled through campus in a sleek Lamborghini, reportedly valued at more than $300,000. The head-turning sportscar was part of a name, image and likeness (NIL) deal with a high-end automotive group.
In stark contrast, the Bulldogs’ new starting quarterback, Gunner Stockton, cruises through town in a 1984 Ford F-150. With a four-speed transmission and odometer that clicked past 300,000 miles long ago, the two-tone truck lacks modern conveniences such as air conditioning, power locks and power windows.
For Stockton’s family and friends in the tiny mountain town of Tiger, Georgia (about 90 minutes north of Athens), the old pickup feels like an appropriate choice.
“I think that sums him up,” said Stockton’s uncle, Allyn Stockton. “He’s just kind of a plain-wrapper guy. He’s really a simple guy.”
On Dec. 7, college football fans were introduced to Stockton in the second half of Georgia’s 22-19 overtime victory against Texas in the SEC championship game. After Beck was injured on the final play of the first half, Stockton came off the bench to rally the Bulldogs from a 6-3 deficit.
With Beck undergoing season-ending surgery this week to repair the elbow on his throwing arm, the No. 2 Bulldogs’ hopes in the College Football Playoff now rest partly on Stockton’s right arm and legs.
The third-year sophomore is expected to make his first career start against No. 7 Notre Dame in a CFP quarterfinal at the Allstate Sugar Bowl in New Orleans on New Year’s Day (8:45 p.m. ET, ESPN/ESPN+).
Stockton’s family and friends say he has been preparing for this moment for much of his life.
“The people that watched him play in Rabun County aren’t surprised at all,” Allyn Stockton said. “They knew this was coming.”
IT WOULDN’T TAKE someone long to meet all of Tiger’s residents; its population was 422 in the most recent U.S. Census. The one-stoplight town has a still-operating drive-in theater. The roadside attraction Goats on the Roof on Highway 441 used to sell everything from Amish foods and furniture to homemade fudge and ice cream. And, yes, visitors could feed goats that maintain the lawn on the roof.
The Stockton family settled in Rabun County in 1956 and opened a car dealership; Stockton’s dad, Rob, still works there. Gunner was named after his paternal great-grandfather, V.D. Stockton, who was shot down twice while serving as an aerial gunner aboard B-17s during World War II and was known to his friends as “Gunner.”
Both of Rob’s parents attended Georgia and his late father, Lawrence, also graduated from the university’s pharmacy school. Lawrence was an avid Bulldogs football fan and took his sons to many home games and a few on the road over the years.
Rob and Allyn weren’t with their father when Georgia knocked off No. 8 Auburn 20-16 on the road on Nov. 16, 1985. The aftermath of that upset win became one of the most bizarre moments in the history of the “Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry” because Auburn police used water cannons on Georgia fans who had rushed the field. The police also eventually turned the hoses on Bulldogs fans in the stands.
Jack Walton, the Auburn University police chief at the time, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he didn’t second-guess what his officers did. “My only regret is that we didn’t get every one of them,” he said.
Lawrence Stockton was among 38 people who were arrested that night. He told the AJC that he never went onto the field. According to Lawrence, he was handcuffed and taken to a holding area for asking a police officer why they were spraying the stands. He spent four hours in jail until his wife bailed him out.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have gone down and asked why they were spraying in the stands,” Lawrence Stockton told the AJC. “But you can only watch and take so much before you become a concerned citizen.”
Three days later, Allyn Stockton was sitting in homeroom at Rabun County High when a friend showed him the newspaper article. He didn’t know his dad had been arrested.
“Dad’s rendition of it was probably different from reality,” said Allyn Stockton, an attorney in Rabun County. “His thing was, ‘Hey, it’s one thing to turn the hoses on the people on the field. They turned them up on the people in the stands. There were elderly people up there and they couldn’t get out of the way.'”
V.D. Stockton had been the area’s district attorney for more than a decade, and his son’s charge of disturbing the peace was soon dropped.
Many years later, a stepbrother sent Allyn Stockton another article that included a photo history of the 1986 Auburn-Georgia game, which is still remembered as the “Game Between the Hoses.” He spotted his dad on the field in one of the photos.
“I mean, he’s on the field,” Allyn Stockton said. “One guy’s got a billy stick and there’s about three or four [cops] on him. My understanding was Dad wasn’t on the field, but he’s clearly getting the hell beat out of him on the field.”
On Oct. 30, 2010, Lawrence Stockton died after watching Georgia lose to Florida 34-31 in overtime in Jacksonville, Florida. He walked back to a tailgating area outside the stadium with friends and collapsed from a heart attack. He was 63.
ALLYN AND ROB shared their father’s love of football. Rob was an All-American safety at Georgia Southern and is a member of the school’s athletics hall of fame. Gunner’s mother, Sherrie, a counselor at Rabun County High, was among the all-time scoring leaders in basketball at Erskine College in Due West, South Carolina. Gunner’s sister, Georgia, played basketball at Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina.
But Gunner is the best athlete in the family. When Gunner was about 6 years old, Rob asked Rabun County High assistant coach George Bobo if he’d start working with his son. Bobo had been a longtime high school football coach in Thomasville, Georgia. His son, Mike, is currently Georgia’s offensive coordinator.
George Bobo moved to the north Georgia mountains at the urging of then-Rabun County High coach Sonny Smart, who is Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart’s father.
When George Bobo saw Gunner throw a football the first time, he said, “Holy crap, you need to make him a quarterback.”
Stockton was the quarterback on teams that went 65-0 in the North Georgia Youth Football League. He didn’t lose a game until the seventh grade at Rabun County Middle School. The next season, he played quarterback for the high school JV team as an eighth grader.
Stockton was a four-year starter at Rabun County High. As a senior in 2021, he completed 71.3% of his pass attempts for 4,134 yards with 55 touchdowns and one interception. He also ran for 956 yards with 15 scores. In four seasons, Stockton accumulated 13,652 passing yards with 177 touchdowns and 4,372 rushing yards with 77 scores.
Stockton broke Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence‘s state record for career touchdown passes and Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson‘s state mark for career total yardage.
Stockton ran for seven more touchdowns than current Detroit Lions tailback Jahmyr Gibbs, who had 70 at Dalton High School from 2017 to 2019.
When Stockton wasn’t playing sports, he tended to cattle, hunted deer and bears, and fished for trout in mountain streams. He fished and water skied at nearby Lake Rabun, where former Alabama coach Nick Saban and other coaches had vacation homes. Just before Stockton turned 16, he asked his parents for cows to put on his grandmother’s farm. They gave him four cows and a bull for Christmas.
“The old farm had terrible fencing,” Rob Stockton said. “Everybody in the county helped him and knew that they were his when they got out of the fence. We would get 911 calls and they’d say, ‘Your cows are out, put them up.’ Or people would stop and just put them up.”
Stockton once went gator hunting with a nuisance trapper in Florida, along with his uncle Allyn, Bulldogs safety Dan Jackson and former tight end Cade Brock. He told his family he wanted to beat the Gators in Jacksonville because that’s where his grandfather died.
BEFORE HIS JUNIOR season of high school, Stockton committed to play at South Carolina, where Mike Bobo was working as offensive coordinator. After Bobo left for Auburn, Stockton flipped to Georgia. By the time he enrolled, Bobo was working as an analyst for the Bulldogs.
Stockton redshirted at Georgia in 2022, then attempted 19 passes in four games last season. He had taken the field in only three games before he was thrust into action against the Longhorns.
“He has never stood on the sidelines in his entire life,” Rob Stockton said. “His goal this year was to be the greatest backup and greatest supporter of Carson Beck that he could possibly be.”
Stockton’s time finally came against Texas in the second half of the SEC championship. He led the Bulldogs on a 75-yard touchdown drive on his first possession, then threw a bad interception that helped the Longhorns tie the score at 16 on Bert Auburn‘s 37-yard field goal with 18 seconds left in regulation.
With the Bulldogs trailing 19-16 in overtime, Stockton lowered his shoulder pads at the end of a run at the Texas 4. He was met by Longhorns safety Andrew Mukuba, whose jarring tackle sent Stockton’s helmet flying.
Stockton held on to the ball for a first down, and Trevor Etienne ran into the end zone on the next play to give the Bulldogs a victory.
“It was brutal to watch,” Rob Stockton said. “Watching the replay of it on the scoreboard was worse than watching it live. But seeing him pop back up, it didn’t bother me much.”
Sherrie Stockton hasn’t watched a replay of the hit and “doesn’t intend to.”
The Bulldogs will have had more than three weeks to get Stockton ready to play the Fighting Irish. Regardless of what happens at the Sugar Bowl, his parents don’t expect him to stray far from his roots.
Stockton will still make the 74-mile drive from Athens back to Tiger in the same 40-year-old truck his grandfather once owned. He might even need a few neighbors to push it off when it doesn’t crank.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports9 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway