California horse racing is at a crossroads. Can it survive?

LOS ANGELES — Frank Stronach was a hands-on boss and always thinking of the future, his vision dominated by his love of horse racing.

So, it was in that spirit that in 2006 he took Robert Hartman, his general manager of Golden Gate Fields, on an hour drive from Albany to the little town of Dixon, about 20 miles from Sacramento.

"We get out of the car and stand in the middle of nothing, and he says, 'We're going to build a race track here,' " said Hartman, now chair of the University of Arizona's renowned Race Track Industry Program.

"It was a Field of Dreams kind of moment," Hartman said. "I looked around and thought, 'This is insane. What are we doing in this field next to I-80?' "

Stronach, then head of Magna Entertainment Corp., which became The Stronach Group, owner of Santa Anita and Golden Gate Fields, had bought 260 acres in this town of about 15,000 people. His plans were to build a smaller-scale race track that looked like a Florentine villa, with open spaces and rows of trees, connected to an entertainment and retail complex.

Not everyone in Dixon was happy with the idea of development and they demanded a series of ballot initiatives.

Stronach did everything he could to save the project. He promised to not have casino-style gambling or slot machines, should that option become available. He offered to turn the infield into athletic fields open to the public and construct a 20,000-square-foot indoor practice venue and build a baseball field on the property. He even promised to close the track during tomato canning season, in deference to the local Campbell Soup Company plant.

But on April 17, 2007, the initiatives were voted down by an average of 300 votes. The plan was dead. TSG sold the property in 2021.

"Now that I look back and understand that going to Dixon would have been the best possible thing we could have done," Hartman said. "The land at Golden Gate Fields was always going to be so valuable and racing is not the optimal use of 80-plus acres on the San Francisco Bay.

"If we had the vision that Frank had over a decade ago and moved Golden Gate out of the picture and moved to Dixon, the sport could be in a very different place. Cheaper land might have been more economically viable."

TSG announced this year that Golden Gate Fields will be closing next summer, giving the Northern California racing circuit an extremely uncertain future. The Southern California circuit hopes