For 170 years of California state fairs, there has always been horse racing. This summer will break the streak, as a dying industry has retreated to a handful of Southern California tracks, leaving no horses available for Sacramento racing.
With horse facilities comprising more than a quarter of the footprint at the 360-acre Cal Expo, that’s a lot of dormant space for the coming fair. It was undoubtedly a painful decision for the Cal Expo Board of Directors to abandon the horse racing tradition this year. But there is little reason to suspect that a dying sport in California will reverse itself.
Cal Expo is arguably facing the most important redevelopment decision in its 56 years at the existing site. If not horse racing, then what? There can only be so many tractor pulls in town in a year. This is a massive reuse project. And Cal Expo, an obscure apparatus of the state under the Secretary for Food and Agriculture, is going to need all the friends and vision it can get.
Opinion
Cal Expo is “an unfunded state agency,” said Tom Martinez, its chief executive officer. That means that it has to generate all the revenues to manage this 360-acre property from the events that it hosts, the summer fair being the annual highlight. And this summer, the grandstand designed to hold more than 4,000 horse racing fans won’t be helping to sustain the fair…