Fasig-Tipton sale moving from Calder to Palm Meadows

Fasig-Tipton's select 2-year-old sale will relocate in 2011 from its usual venue at Calder Race Course to the Palm Meadows training facility in Boynton Beach, Fla., about 45 miles north of Gulfstream Park.

The juvenile sale will take place on March 3, 2011, following a Feb. 28 under-tack preview.

MI Developments, which owns Palm Meadows and is chaired by Frank Stronach, announced the relocation late Thursday. Earlier this week, MI Developments stock rose on news that Stronach had offered to buy the remaining shares in MI Developments that he doesn't already own through a family-controlled company, ST Acquisition Corp.

Thursday's announcement that the Fasig-Tipton sale will relocate did not give a reason for the move, and Fasig-Tipton's CEO, Boyd Browning, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Fasig-Tipton's select 2-year-old sale in Florida is one of the auction calendar's most important boutique auctions. The 2010 edition produced a $2.3 million sale-topper in Brock, who sold to Stonestreet Stables, and it posted an average of $257,473 and a $200,000 median. Last year, six of the year's 10 most expensive juveniles were Fasig-Tipton Florida graduates.

Palm Meadows opened in 2002. The 286-acre facility can house 1,325 horses in 40 barns and has a 1 1/8-mile main track, seven-eighth-mile turf course, and a mile-long jogging track.

Fasig-Tipton also announced that it will devote an unspecified portion of the 2-year-old sale's proceeds to Blue Horse Charities, a charitable wing of the auction house that provides grants to programs for retirement and retraining for Thoroughbred racing and breeding stock. Blue Horse Charities gets its funding through pledges from Fasig-Tipton and its auctions' consignors and buyers.