by Greg Forde

William “Win” Cooper III, a Flint, Michigan, real estate developer on Thursday filed an application with the Michigan Office of Racing Commissioner to conduct 80 days of live racing at Great Lakes Downs in 2008, beating the application deadline by one day.
 
Michigan law requires all race tracks, regardless of breed, to submit race date requests to the MORC by 5 p.m. on August 31.
 
Cooper, through his company Cooper Racing LLC, also is seeking to purchase the Great Lakes facility and has asked the MORC for a license to operate the track.
 
“I’ve been involved in horse racing for a number of years, and I was concerned there would not be racing in Michigan” said Cooper, who currently does not own any race horses.
 
Besides Cooper’s application, Fruitport Township supervisor Ron Cooper (no relation) also has filed a letter of intent with the MORC. Commissioner Christine White, however, said she had yet to receive his application.
 
In a related development, a group led by Citizens Republic Bancorp Chairman and Magna Entertainment Corp. director Jerry Campbell, applied on Friday for the Metro Detroit race track license vacated by Magna Entertainment as part of the company’s decision to leave Michigan racing.

By statute, the holder of the Metro Detroit license must apply for no less than 160 days of live racing.
 
Post It Stables Inc., a company controlled by Campbell along with his wife Lisa, and Michigan owner-breeder Henry Mast Jr, would build a track in western Wayne County, possibly on the site originally slated for Michigan Downs in the Detroit suburb of Romulus.
 
Campbell has been down this road before. When Ladbroke-Detroit Race Course closed abruptly in 1998, it was Campbell who stepped in and purchased the shuttered harness track, then called Muskegon Race Course, and converted it to a Thoroughbred facility, allowing racing to continue. In 2000, Campbell sold the track to Magna Entertainment and joined the Magna board as vice-chairman.
 
Campbell said if approved, his group would begin construction immediately with the hope of racing in 2008. He also said the group was prepared to conduct its meeting at a different location if the Wayne County facility was not ready.
 
“We’re doing this so there is a future to this industry,” Campbell said. “If someone else wants to do it, we will gladly step aside.”
 
In early August, Magna announced they were pulling out of Michigan racing. Since then, horsemen have scrambled to fill the void and keep racing alive.

At stake is an estimated $8-million Thoroughbred purse pool that would have been left unprotected without a race-date application.
 
The MORC is expected to announce final race dates later this fall. Whoever receives the dates for Great Lakes then will need to negotiate a contract with the horsemen, something Michigan HBPA executive director Gary Tinkle said his group is excited about considering the bleak outlook just a month ago.
 
“Hopefully there are several bona fide applicants we can sit down and talk with,” he said. “The more the better.”

Greg Forde is a Michigan-based Thoroughbred Times correspondent