The Agricultural town of Hardwick was incorporated in 1739 and then in the late 1800s the villages of Gilbertville and Wheelwright joined the many New England river textile mill towns that grew and died during the 1900s as the industry moved to the South. In the 1920s the city of Boston used eminent domain to wipe four Swift River towns and numerous villages off the face of the earth to create Quabbin. 283 years after Hardwick incorporated, a very wealthy group of race horse and gambling entrepreneurs, like a group of vultures flew, I mean rode into Hardwick. Driven in big limousines they stepped out licking their chops and saw the historic Guernsey Dell Farm, since repurchased and renamed Great Meadow Brook Farm. They must have thought, ’We can take this group of country folks’ beautiful APR land and get our race track with relatively small money. Besides this beautiful 360 acre generally flat parcel, they saw some poverty and municipal service holes that they could ‘help’. It seems they said, ‘We’ll just tell them that we only plan to have 2, 3 or 4 races a year for five years. Who could be against that? We’ll tell them it will be like the Over the Walls events held there years ago and will impact the town sort of like the Hardwick’s oldest town fair in the country. Of course it really will be nothing like any of that, but what do they know? Oh, and to make it sound very agricultural, we’ll talk a lot about horse breeding, horse training, horse retirement, farm to table restaurants, a bed and breakfast, and other agricultural sounding things. The horse racing, where all the money is, will only happen ‘a few days a year’ so you will hardly be able to tell that horse racing even happens here. We set it up and take it down like a ‘movie set’ and then the land is just like it always was. All of this will cost us very little money with the state subsidized money and we can make the huge money that comes with becoming the only thoroughbred race track in New England. The key is the track for simulcast betting venue getting us the gaming license. And we’ll offer them a half million dollars a year and some people will think that sure sounds like a lot of money. We’ll tell them they will hardly even know that we are having racing on their historic APR land so loved and enjoyed with regular walkers and bicyclers by so many locals. They’ll think, ‘Aren’t we lucky. We’ll take your generous offer.’ This group of ultra wealthy people, along with other wealthy backers, had tried and tried and tried and tried to get town after town after town after town to accept their proposals to build a race track and get a gaming license that would allow them to make millions and millions of dollars from simulcast off track betting. They had high price slick lawyers that knew all the ins and outs of this business and what attractive offers to make to each town to get them to accept a thoroughbred race track. They offered this and that with significant sums of money that appeared to offer each town a ‘brighter future.’ Many local residents and town officials in these towns thought it sounded like a win, win, win. The perfect trifecta. But as some of the citizens began to look more carefully and dig deeper to understand who these people were and what their offer would really mean in the long and short run, things changed. As these towns’ citizens peeled back the layers of the onion and took the time to understand more, each town came to realize that this was more of a mirage that was being sold as a bill of goods. The reality was that the proposal and generous offers were not worth the long term effects that would happen to their towns forever if they approved a location and stepped into the quicksand. So four larger towns, with much more infrastructure, with much better offers than offered to Hardwick…..voted no thanks, no thanks, no thanks, no thanks! Any thoughtful person would have to ask themselves, why would they decline better offers in towns that would be less negatively affected and we would accept less and be affected negatively far more than they would be? Then after looking around, the wealthy owners and lawyers found Hardwick and said, let’s give them an offer for less and tell them this will be great for the town and they will hardly notice the racing. When they see the shiny half million dollar object, they’ll bite and swallow this hook, line and sinker. Once we sell it to the select board and some interested citizens, many town’s people will believe how wonderful this is and what a great deal this will be to solve needs the town has. It will be only a half million a year but they might think this could get an ambulance, new fire truck and equipment, a police station, hire more police, and all the existing businesses will make a whole lot more money when people come to watch the horses race and bet their money. We know they really don’t have the kind of businesses or infrastructure to handle this, but they don’t need to know that. We will tell them we will do a traffic study and mitigate any traffic problems….after they approve the location that can NEVER be changed back. Then it is an approved thoroughbred horse racing location for eternity. Even if we fail, more likely grow, or the town decides they made a bad decision, they can not change it. The state makes that an air tight permanently approved location. Right before the Gaming Commission’s approval deadline, we will need to get our license. We’ll give them a Host Community Agreement that they will hardly have time to thoroughly figure out what they will need to understand. We will need to get this done to get our approval from the Gaming Commission and we need to get this resolved so we can buy the property. A non binding approval is not good enough for us, and remember, this has been and always will be about us and our required deadline, even if your select board says otherwise. Now the key will be that we will put the town and its officials on our very, very tight schedule. They will approve it before they can dig into all the facts about who we are, what money we will make, what a location approval will mean, how many race days the state will require and how we have offered much more to other towns and how they figured out it was still a bad deal. Some concerned citizens may spend much time digging into this opaque offer. So we get a vote before the town officials and the rest of the town’s people who have not had the time or energy to look at our business history and our previous failed proposals in four larger towns, even after making them much bigger offers. These citizens will focus on the four maximum race days we ‘plan’ to offer,’ for five years. We know that the state will require a minimum of 20 race days and all the set up and take down days will add up to 70 days soon. Then thousands of race fans, as well as hundreds of owners, trainers, jockeys, staying in RVs as well as hundreds of horses, trailers, trucks coming and going, as well as hundreds of port-a- potties, dozens of food trucks and all the workers to set up the track with a mile of rails, stands and betting stations for thousands of people. We will tell them that we might expect two to five thousand fans. But we know it could be much more with cities like Boston, Worcester, Springfield, Hartford, Manchester, Concord and lots of surrounding town and smaller towns between here and there. These fans will happily travel many miles on those two lane winding roads. Anyone who wants to come watch thoroughbreds race, bet and party will know this is the only thoroughbred track in New England. “Build it and they will come.” No these will not be the friends, family and neighbors from surrounding towns that regularly come to the Hardwick Town Fair.
Some in town have said that this is just another NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) issue. But of course many of us will not really have it in our backyard, whether we live in any one of the four villages. But if any of us lived on or near Upper Church Street, or near the center of the Village of Hardwick, on one of the small winding roads coming to the center Hardwick, facing thousands of out of town fans, owners, trainers, jockeys, cars, trucks, horse trailers, RVs traveling past your backyard or front yard seventy or more days a year in the not so distant future. Believe me, many people have had to consider this being suddenly thrust upon them. I believe if it were you, you very likely may be saying like many, please, not in my back yard. Most if not all of these people have worked hard for many years, have invested all or much of their money, their sweat, their dreams to live and raise families in these quieter rural settings. I do not live in any of these more threatened ares, but I certainly can empathize with those who do, can you? But more than just the majorly, directly, affected families, there are many who understand that this will negatively change the quiet, rural nature of all of Hardwick. As many have agreed, the town has real needs. Many have already offered ideas, their time and energy to begin to address these issues over time. Many believe this is a far better way to approach our town’s need’s without devastating the property investment of so many directly affected or dramatically changing the nature of our town. We have had two offers to purchase and use the Great Meadow Book APR land in the last six months. Why do some believe this the best and last chance to utilize the wonderful property? So many people on both sides of this enormous issue facing our town have said, “We want to be well informed to make the best decision for the town.” But that really does take time and digging deeper into the facts and background with this offer, previous offers to other towns and the backgrounds and motivations of the backers of this proposal to truly understand the long term effects of this proposal. If you have been involved in trying to become well informed and understand the time and energy it takes, you will understand more and more why Commonwealth Horse Racing LLC is dangling the half million dollars a year and asking us to hurry up and make a decision on their timeline that we cannot retract, before more and more of our town’s citizens can become better Informed. You know, this isn’t their first rodeo. They are many steps ahead of us and they really do not want us to catch up.
— James Lagomarsino, Hardwick
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