A federal bankruptcy court in Illinois on Tuesday continued a hearing until Wednesday on a motion by Hawthorne Racecourse in Stickney, Ill., that is seeking approval for the ability to tap into a $16 million line of credit for a reorganization plan under the protection of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy code, according to officials who attended the hearing. Judge Timothy Barnes of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois scheduled a second day of argument on the motion following nearly seven hours of deliberations starting at 11 a.m. Central on Tuesday, according to David McCaffery, executive director of the Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, who attended the hearing with other ITHA officials. In its bankruptcy filings on Friday, Hawthorne had made a request for so-called “debtor-in-possession” financing, which allows companies in Chapter 11 to secure loans to pay off debts that are impacting its ability to continue to operate. Access to the loan will likely be critical to Hawthorne’s reorganization plan. According to McCaffery, Hawthorne’s attorneys said during the hearing that the track planned to use the loan to pay wages and salaries for the track’s employees, replenish nearly $3 million in accounts for both Thoroughbred and Standardbred horsemen that are currently accessible, address debts to other racing companies, and prepare the track for a live Thoroughbred meet later this year. The judge “went out of his way to say that he wanted the horsemen to know that he was very sympathetic with their situation,” McCaffery said. Barnes scheduled a hearing on Wednesday and a hearing on Tuesday, March 10, introducing the possibility that the issue of debtor-in-possession financing will not be resolved until next week. Hawthorne’s finances have been severely impacted over the past 18 months by debts that caused nearly all major racing companies to cut off the track and its OTB parlors from outbound and incoming simulcasts. It has been further hindered by liens placed on its property by unpaid contractors. Late in January, the Illinois Racing Board revoked Hawthorne’s Standardbred license in the midst of a harness meet in which horsemen said they were not receiving purse monies earned at the track. Hawthorne had said in its initial bankruptcy filings on Friday that it was in arrears on a $51.58 million loan secured by mortgages on its racetrack property and an OTB parlor in Crestwood. The properties have been assessed at $98 million, the filings said. The line of credit has a 13 percent interest rate per annum and is due in 120 days, according to the filings. Hawthorne, the sole remaining Thoroughbred track on the once solid Chicago circuit, has had financial struggles for years, despite being granted the right to operate a casino by the Illinois legislature in 2019. The track has been owned and operated continuously by four generations of the Carey family. Various plans to obtain financing for the construction of the casino have failed to materialize amidst a cash squeeze at the track brought on by its deteriorating financial conditions and disagreement among the dozens of Carey family members who own equity in the track. In the past 18 months, the track has been unable to settle its simulcasting accounts with various racing companies, leading those companies to cut Hawthorne off from a critical source of revenue. The bankruptcy filing says that Hawthorne’s simulcasting revenues dwindled from roughly $5 million a month in 2023 to “significantly less” than $1 million a month when it filed for bankruptcy. According to the bankruptcy filing, the creditors with the largest unsecured debts include Fanatics, a sports gambling company that partnered with Hawthorne, at $8.75 million; and Monarch Content Management, the simulcast-marketing company operated by 1/ST Racing and Gaming, at $7.1 million. The debts owed to contractors who placed liens on Hawthorne’s property after completing projects on a partial demolition of the track’s grandstand in 2023 total $10.6 million, according to the filing. Other racing companies who are listed as creditors with unsecured debts are Woodbine Entertainment in Ontario, Canada ($1.2 million); Churchill Downs Inc. in Louisville, Ky., ($975,000); the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, which assesses dues on tracks for its regulatory and drug-testing programs ($971,000), and Laurel Park in Maryland ($875,000). Nearly every other major simulcasting entity in the United States also is listed in the filing as having an unsecured debt, such as the New York Racing Association, Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, and Penn National. The filing also says that Hawthorne took out a $5 million loan in 2025 from a group called Latto Capital that remains unpaid. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.