Frank Nickens, prospective buyer of Turf Paradise, plans to revitalize 67-year-old facility
Frank Nickens, who has reached a purchase agreement to buy Turf Paradise in Phoenix, is a 57-year-old businessman with construction and mining interests in Arizona but no experience in racing, other than a lifelong friendship with a Quarter Horse trainer in Louisiana.
While he doesn’t have experience running a racetrack, he has one thing he says that will make his project to revive Turf Paradise a success: a long track record of “doing the right thing the right way,” he said in an interview with Daily Racing Form on Thursday afternoon.
“There has never been a time where I had the money to do something and I didn’t succeed,” Nickens said.
Nickens emerged as a buyer for the 67-year-old track this week, only days after the Turf Paradise’s current owner, Jerry Simms, said he would close the track following the collapse of a previous deal. The previous buyers backed out after failing to win authorization from the state legislature to operate historical horse racing machines at the track.
Nickens said that he learned of the collapse last Wednesday while visiting one of the OTBs in the Phoenix area and hearing that the track’s days were numbered.
“For whatever reason it motivated me to say, ‘Let’s see what we can do,’ ” he said.
He began making phone calls immediately, he said, in an effort to learn about the potential for the track, which sits on 213 acres in North Phoenix. He met with Simms later in the week, and this week, on Tuesday, he met with the leadership of the track’s horsemen’s group, the Arizona Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, which has had a strained relationship with track management over the past decade.
“I told them, ‘You guys had a disgruntled relationship in the past, but I don’t want to hear anymore about the old guy,’ ” he said, noting that he had come to the meeting straight from a mining site in coveralls. “I’m the new guy, and we have to put that behind us.”
Nickens said that he has formed a company, Turf Paradise Land Trust, in which he and a partner, Richard Moore, will hold 51 percent of the equity. The other 49 percent of the company will consist of an investment from partners, Nickens said.
The group plans to spend $50 million in the next year to refurbish the track and its backside, Nickens said.
“Every square inch of it is going to change,” Nickens said. “I’m not just talking about putting a new coat of paint on it. We’re going to put the money into it to do it as a first-class facility.”
Nickens also said that he planned to develop portions of the property for retail, including businesses that would be utilized by horsemen at the track.
As for live racing in the near future, Nickens said that the earliest a meet could start would be January, two months after Turf’s traditional opening in early November.
“There’s so much going on right now that the first season is going to be a total crap shoot, but definitely it will be a hybrid, shortened season,” Nickens said. “After that, we can go back to November to May, if that’s what the horsemen want.”
Although Nickens said he has no experience in racing, he said he grew up in Louisiana and broke horses when he was young. He declined to identify his lifelong friend, the Quarter Horse trainer, but says he hears from him “all the time” about the ups and downs of the racing life.
“I looked at a lot of other tracks, and we have an opportunity to get something done here, make something first-rate,” he said. “And I’m a guy who understands how to get things done.”
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