For an industry with long-festering problems and a year-end deadline looming to figure them all out, nearly everyone involved in Maryland racing can be sure of only one thing for the long-term future. “The Preakness will be at Pimlico,” said Bill Cole, an advisor to the City of Baltimore who has worked on negotiations surrounding the Maryland racing industry for five years. “There is no other alternative site. Baltimore is not going to lose the Preakness.” But other than that, the Maryland racing industry is facing an uncertain future. Relations between the state’s horsemen and 1/ST Racing, the owner of both Pimlico and its sister track Laurel, remain strained. Everyone involved agrees that racing’s current revenue streams can no longer support two tracks, but help from casino-type gambling at the facilities is off the table. And the state legislature is no longer willing to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into renovating both tracks, as it was just three years ago. With the legislature’s change of heart, 1/ST has hinted about walking away from the tracks, according to officials – perhaps a negotiating tactic, perhaps not. Laurel sits on valuable real estate along the I-95 corridor. Pimlico lies at the center of a disadvantaged neighborhood in Baltimore that the city is eager to improve, proving its bona fides of its commitment to social and economic opportunity. A plan to address the concerns is expected to be released by Dec. 1, under legislation passed earlier this year establishing the so-called Maryland Thoroughbred Racetrack Operating Authority. The authority was given the mandate to study the state racing industry and make recommendations on how it should be reorganized to put it on firm footing. The authority has also been given the power to “manage and oversee” day-to-day racing operations at Laurel and Pimlico, should 1/ST Racing step aside, including the ability to reach agreements with horsemen and operating companies, perhaps under a non-profit model. Under the legislation, the authority starts its work on the report on June 1. “I can’t predict today where any of this will lead,” said Cole. “I think it’s going to be a sprint to find a solution.” :: Take your handicapping to the next level and play with FREE DRF Past Performances - Formulator or Classic.  Given the political clout of Baltimore civic and legislative leaders and the city’s passion for keeping the Preakness at Pimlico, the starting point for the plan revolves around shutting Laurel Park and developing its property and using Pimlico for year-round racing, according to Alan Foreman, the general counsel to the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association and an important player in the state’s racing industry for 30 years. But that plan by itself is not a long-term solution, Foreman said. “Pimlico is not big enough,” Foreman said. “It can’t handle the consolidation. There aren’t enough stalls, there isn’t enough backstretch housing. So we have to ask, what are the other options? Is there a place where we can build a training facility, to keep all these horses we need to support year-round racing?” Officials of 1/ST Racing did not respond this week to multiple requests to make representatives available to discuss the company’s plans in Maryland. For now, horsemen and 1/ST seem to be ready to at least set aside their short-term differences until the new authority issues its report of recommendations. The two groups are operating under an extension of a 10-year operating agreement, but that extension expires on June 30, and there were clearly some tensions several months ago over re-negotiating a new agreement. Foreman said that the sides will resume negotiations after the Preakness this weekend, at which point he “anticipates” that a new extension will be signed to get the two sides through the end of the year. 1/ST Racing still has not applied for racing dates beyond June 30, but Foreman said that the new agreement will call for racing dates for the second half of the year along the same lines as previous years. The current long-term uncertainty seems a far cry from the expectations the racing industry had in 2020, when the legislature passed a bill authorizing $375 million in bonds to rebuild both tracks while developing substantial portions of the Pimlico property for retail and community use. That plan has now been permanently scuttled due to the impact of rising interest rates, cost over-runs, and a Maryland law that would put 1/ST Racing on the line for taxes related to the capital improvements provided by the renovations. “It’s abundantly clear that there isn’t enough money to do what we wanted to do,” Cole said. “And there’s probably not a lot of appetite now for the state to put any more money into this.” But both Cole and Foreman said that the plan wouldn’t have worked in the long run anyway, given the current state of the industry. While horsemen and the track both receive shares of casino gambling in the state through statutory formulas, the operations of the racetracks still rely almost exclusively from the revenue derived from pari-mutuel wagering, concessions, and ticketing, and “that revenue is not enough to support two facilities,” Foreman said. As a result, racing officials expect the authority to come back with a plan that entails the renovation of Pimlico to offer modern amenities and a large enough grandstand to leverage ticket demand for the Preakness. Included in the plan will be recommendations for an off-site training facility, perhaps at a partitioned Laurel, perhaps at a new site altogether. Cole and Foreman said, however, that all options are on the table, as long as the result is a long-term future for racing. “We can’t just continue to cobble together small fixes and keep going that way into the future,” Cole said. “At some point there’s nothing left.” Foreman said he remains optimistic. He cited a bill passed in New York several weeks ago providing a $455 million loan to the New York Racing Association to rebuild its own Triple Crown track, Belmont Park. Under that plan, the association’s longtime winter-racing home, Aqueduct, will eventually be bulldozed and redeveloped. Downstate racing will occur exclusively at Belmont. The similarities of the plans are not coincidental. Across the U.S. over the last 20 years, racetracks on major circuits have been sold for the property underneath them, with racing in California, Florida, and Illinois seeing the most drastic consolidations. Everywhere in racing, less is becoming more, as racing companies abandon multi-track racing circuits for the economies of scale provided by downsizing the geographic footprint of live racing. “Pimlico is going to have a new look, a better Pimlico, a more modern Pimlico,” Foreman said. “And in today’s marketplace, that’s a real positive.” :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.