A California real-estate developer has backed out of a potential deal to purchase Turf Paradise in Phoenix, and the track will be closed by its current owner as of Sept. 30, a decision that will lead to the unavailability of racing signals throughout a network of offtrack betting parlors in the state on Oct. 1, according to officials in Arizona. James Watson, a commercial real-estate developer who began due diligence on buying the 213-acre property in the spring with several partners, failed to reach an agreement by Friday that would have led to the sale, according to the officials. With that deadline expired, Jerry Simms, the current owner of Turf Paradise, said that the track would be closed on Sept. 30 in a statement released late Monday. Under Arizona racing regulations, a racing license is required to send simulcast signals to the state’s OTB network, which generally consists of restaurants that maintain self-service betting terminals. Simms, who has owned Turf Paradise for 23 years, said in his statement that the track’s agreement with horsemen expires on Sept. 30, which means the OTBs will not be able to receive the signals. Account wagering is legal in Arizona, though it was unclear on Monday night if account-wagering operations would continue to be allowed to take bets after the Sept. 30 surrender. Vince Francia, the longtime general manager of Turf Paradise, said that the track did not know if the decision to close would prohibit the acceptance of bets in the state. Rudy Casillas, executive director of the Arizona Department of Racing, did not immediately return a phone call. The collapse of the deal to buy Turf Paradise comes several months after lobbyists for Watson and his partners were unable to gain support for legislation that would have allowed the track to operate casino-type games, including historical horse racing machines, which have been used to boost purses at tracks in other states. One of his partners, Revolutionary Racing, had experience in getting authorization for historical horse racing machines in Virginia, leading to the re-opening of Colonial Downs, the Thoroughbred track in the state. On Tuesday, Maxwell Hartgraves, a spokesman for the Department of Racing, said that the commission had not yet determined whether account-wagering operations would be legal if Turf Paradise no longer had an agreement with horsemen.   “That will be a topic of discussion at our next commission meeting on Sept. 28,” Hartgraves said.   Watson, who served as a commissioner on the California Horse Racing Board, said on Tuesday morning that the failure to receive authorization for the machines, plus some recent pushback by horsemen to zoning changes that would have allowed development of portions of the property, led him to abandon the deal.  “We’ve been at this for a year, we’ve spent a lot of money, and it just became too much of an uphill battle,” Watson said. “We were really focused on infusing some energy into racing, but the way to do that is through HHR.”  Simms, the current owner, had unsuccessfully sought casino-type gambling at the track for decades, but those efforts were resisted heavily by the Native American tribes that control casino gambling in Arizona. Watson said that the state legislature was receptive to allowing the operation of the machines, but that the Native American tribes’ own lobbyists had argued to state officials that the machines “would pose some kind of threat to their operations, which we don’t agree with.”  Uncertainty surrounding the Turf Paradise sale and the long-term future of racing in the state has thrown the local horsemen’s community into turmoil. Similar concerns about the future of racing in Northern California, which shares a horse population with Turf Paradise, have contributed to a sense of high anxiety in the western region of the Unite States about the collapse of racing in the region. Francia said that “two groups” continue to discuss the possibility of buying the track, though he declined to identify the groups. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.