HORSEPLOP.COM
General Category => Harness Racing => Topic started by: slimjones on December 07, 2024, 07:46:16 PM
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Penn gaming wanted freehold to fail. The property is worth much more as real estate than it is as a track. Why else would you keep a dinosaur race secretary that hates her job and didn’t do one thing to promote racing or make anyone want to race there. They haven’t put $1 into the track in years. it’s got history but it’s an embarrassment to the sport. Penn is evil and will do it to more tracks next.
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Closing up 4 more race cards the heritage group is there taking inventory for the upcoming auction .
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Penn gaming wanted freehold to fail. The property is worth much more as real estate than it is as a track. Why else would you keep a dinosaur race secretary that hates her job and didn’t do one thing to promote racing or make anyone want to race there. They haven’t put $1 into the track in years. it’s got history but it’s an embarrassment to the sport. Penn is evil and will do it to more tracks next.
Fuck off...Karen has done a great job!
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Is Karen that older redhead that Howard introduced us to on our visit . She must have looked good like the track back in the day .
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Karen, she good people
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It is hard to believe that the people running could be so incompetent. There is no doubt that Freehold was set up for failure...in my opinion.
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Of course it was orchestrated. Remember Roosevelt Raceway? The owners turned a beautiful track into a shithole.
That last year they left garbage strewn all over the parking lot to the point it smelled like a garbage dump.
Not Karens fault. If public, see what Howard Bruno's golden parachute is. Let the place go to shit for obvious reasons. And the dumbass horsemen just let it happen.
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A 25 year plan to fail? Come on, they could have forced failure a long time ago. Penwood wanted a presence in NJ and that's what they bought. They wanted more content to distribute/another outlet for their content, and they hoped they would be in line for whatever may come to NJ. After a period of time when they saw no benefit, they stopped trying to succeed and let the track die a natural death. The sports betting however was their hopes for a starting point and food in the door. I have to admit, I am surprised they didn't try harder with that line of business, but the horse racing line of business was so poor that it couldn't even be a loss-leader type. In the end it wasn't worth it to keep the racing going. This may have been intentional, but not for 25 years.
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Who said 25 years. And what you just described is a plan to fail. Come on man...Sports betting. They opened one window to bet sports. Yeah right. Nice plan for success.
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Freehold was a dump 30 years ago and nothing has been updated since then. The horses suck. Howard Bruno collects a check and has done absolutely nothing to at least make it a little better. Clown should have been fired after the unfortunate starting gate incident 10 years prior. Better off closing the place down at this point.
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Penn gaming wanted freehold to fail. The property is worth much more as real estate than it is as a track. Why else would you keep a dinosaur race secretary that hates her job and didn’t do one thing to promote racing or make anyone want to race there. They haven’t put $1 into the track in years. it’s got history but it’s an embarrassment to the sport. Penn is evil and will do it to more tracks next.
You're right about the Penn Gaming part but putting any blame for this on Karen, the race secretary just shows your ignorance. She has done a fantastic job with what shes had to work with and deserves praise, certainly not derogatory remarks from ignorant asswipes that want to blsme the race secretary for failure.
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OldRockman, you are so correct. Karen did the best that she could as the deck was stacked against her. I think all of us agree that Penn Gaming saw a chance to dump this historic track and make a "big score". Just what Freehold and Route 9 need.....another shopping center and more $800,000 condos.
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Freehold was a dump 30 years ago and nothing has been updated since then. The horses suck. Howard Bruno collects a check and has done absolutely nothing to at least make it a little better. Clown should have been fired after the unfortunate starting gate incident 10 years prior. Better off closing the place down at this point.
I agree that the race facility was a dump back then, but the racehorse quality was top notch as well as the driver colony. Many horses went back and forth racing at Freehold and the swamp when the swamp was the mecca.
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2 weeks padlocked forget about it
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Racing is a losing business. Decoupling would result in the rapid closure of many tracks. In most cases there are more profitable uses for the land than a racetrack.
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Highest and best use always wins out.
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That’s true but so is this title post true. The place caters to old people and the escalators have been broken and boarded up for years now, yes years not months or days. Ownership/Mgt of this facility should be ashamed of the manner in which this wonderful little raceway has been run. Not a penny invested for years. Feel bad for those that work there and did their best to make an old ship continue to sail the best that it can even though its sails were tarnished and in dire need of a life raft but no one can to help and the inevitable came true, the ship sank because the owner group wanted it to.
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In 2 weeks / 4 race cards the party is over for eternity
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So, if management would have invested the needed millions in an attempt to make this facility relevant, would it be profitable today? Would the entire entity be be worth more than it is now? How ,amy times was this place bought and sold over the years?
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Like all the major companies, they close underperforming locations. Penn has racing locations all across the country. This one definitely underperformed. The class of horses was getting worse ever year. It was just a matter of time
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NJ was giving Freehold $1.6 million in purse supplements thru 2029. They have an off track simulcast place (which in pretty nice) in Toms River. There were more but I believe Monmouth Park took them over. They had a sports book which somehow closed down. Nobody folds a sports book. 100% place was driven into the ground. Howard Bruno couldn’t be an assistant manager at McDonald’s let alone be a GM of a harness track.
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I found out Howard lives in Cherry Hill about 45-60 minutes away so he won't be in the area after closing to face the wrath of the people. He is smiling from ear to ear with delight as he gets the golden parachute from upper management. The 90+ people who will be on unemployment and collecting next to nothing now are scared to death. Many of them too old to do anything else and in desperate need of the money.
If I were a regular and bet Freehold, I would make sure Howard got an ear full from me in abuse. Now I just delight in the fact that the crooked teller in history, Bobby, an old POS who works in the dining room on Saturday, will be unemployed. Also, Kevin, the compulsive gambler who works the garbage cans for winning tickets, will have no place to go.
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Most are already headed to the swamp . 8 races most only 7 horse fields . Place is cooked and roasted