Former Surrey mayor Doug McCallum says the current mayor has "betrayed" the city by shutting down Fraser Downs in Cloverdale.
The City of Surrey has yanked the lease back from Great Canadian Entertainment (GCE), the organization that runs both Elements Casino and Fraser Downs on the Cloverdale Fairgrounds.
, the move closes the track, and standardbred racing is over at the oval after 49 years.
McCallum calls it "a devastating blow to Surrey’s economy, its heritage, and working families."
“Brenda Locke has steamrolled an entire industry in Surrey,” charged McCallum, in an email from Safe Surrey Coalition. “Trainers, breeders, jockeys, and workers with unique skill sets are now out of work. These aren’t jobs that can be replaced overnight. She has destroyed an industry just to push through her ego-driven redevelopment schemes.”
The City of Surrey exercised its option under something called “lease recapture rights” and terminated the lease for the racetrack.
Locke says the city needs to start the process for future redevelopment of the fairgrounds in Cloverdale.
“To plan responsibly," the mayor stated, "the City is ending its lease with Fraser Downs so we can begin the critical planning and pre-construction work to revitalize the Cloverdale Fairgrounds and Town Centre."
McCallum said the timing couldn’t be worse for the people employed at the track, with Surrey families struggling with a cost-of-living crisis. The horse racing industry in Surrey supports more than 200 workers and "countless families who depend on the trade of breeding, training, and racing standardbred horses," according to McCallum.
“This isn’t city-building, it’s city-destroying,” he stated. “She (Locke) is ripping out Cloverdale’s roots and bulldozing its heritage to chase a condo pet project no one asked for. That is not leadership. That is ego."
Locke said the plan is to revitalize Cloverdale with new housing and public spaces, which will help support the new Cloverdale hospital and cancer centre.
Mayor Locke also noted the the racetrack and barns cover 12 acres. "Releasing that land now allows us to build the internal road grid, utilities, and sites for recreation and cultural facilities that the community needs.”
She added the city “carefully weighed” the impact the closure would have on the people who work there and measured that against the benefits of redevelopment.
“This is a city-building decision about using public land for the greatest public good, taken within our contractual rights and with proper notice,” she explained.
There are currently no horses in the backstretch and no training going on at Fraser Downs, which has been closed while GCE deals with a rat infestation in the six barns there. The infestation had been the subject of a lawsuit that Harness Racing B.C. brought against GCE, with the HRBC losing that suit earlier this year.
Friday's news release from GCE also noted the grandstand, which includes Elements Casino, is not included in the lease recapture. GCE added the casino and racebook will continue to operate “without impact” going forward. Yuk Yuk's Surrey is also located within Elements and they will be unaffected as well.
Fraser Downs opened on the Fairgrounds in 1976 as Cloverdale Raceway. The name was changed in 1996 to Fraser Downs. The track was a 5/8-mile oval for standardbred harness racing.
— with files from Malin Jordan
