The State Fiddles While The Horse Industry Burns

TENINO - Two miles south of this little Thurston County town, fears for the future of the thoroughbred industry are being transformed into stark reality.

In seven weeks, the DanDar Farm, Washington's most venerable race-horse breeding, boarding and training facility, will end more than 40 years of business.

Dan Agnew, third-generation owner, has sold the 1,875-acre ranch to a Chinese timber company, Citifor, Inc., and will end operations Dec. 31.

The death of the DanDar Farm is not an isolated barometer of the health of the industry. Across the state, from Enumclaw to Yakima, many major breeders have been cutting back operations.

The thoroughbred industry is slowly burning while the state Horse Racing Commission has fiddled in locating a replacement track for Longacres.

Breeding is down 35 to 40 percent of what it was three years ago at many farms.

Delay and uncertainty have been the trademarks of the three-member commission headed by Barbara Shinpoch and appointed and backed by Gov. Mike Lowry. Many breeders are disgusted with both.

Breeders pleaded to the commission earlier this year not to let delays erode the $400-million-a-year industry with its 15,000 to 20,000 direct and indirect jobs. Those pleas have gone unheeded by the commission and the governor.

Live racing will not return to Western Washington in 1994 as expected. Hopes are dimming for 1995. Each year without live racing takes a deeper toll on the industry.

Agnew wrote to customers and friends that the decision to sell was based on declining revenues over the years - "most of which is symptomatic of the general problems facing our state's racing and breeding industry brought about by the closure of Longacres and the uncertainty surrounding a new race track."

He'll continue in the industry elsewhere - in California.

For Stevie Hansen, 52, who has managed DanDar Farm for 18 years, the industry is more than a job. It is a way of life.

"I foaled all the mares since I've been here," she said. "The night people would get me up."

She talks of fillies like "Bring a Smile," who "was tough as nails" and came back from injuries "that would have killed any other horse." There are memories - good and bad. The good in the late '80s when there were 279 thoroughbreds at the farm. Today there are 47. The bad in the way the replacement-track issue has been handled.

Hansen says she'll rest when the farm closes, then maybe go back to school and try to prepare for another line of work.

That's the sad part about what's happening. This is the kind of industry this state needs. The farms lend lovely patches of green and beautiful thoroughbreds to our quality of life. It deserves better.

The racing commission's choice of the Auburn site of Northwest Racing Associates was a high-risk one. NRA has good financing and good management, but a site with wetlands-fill problems that seemed insurmountable - to everyone but the racing commissioners.

Refusal of the commission to consider a good site in Fife as a backup if Auburn should fail finally caused Fife Thoroughbred Racing Management to dissolve. The commission put all its eggs in one basket. That basket remains empty.

Tacoma's Stan Naccarato, longtime sports promoter and backer of the Fife site, said: "You don't leave your backup quarterback at home just because you're in love with your starter."

He believes Northwest Racing Associates has been more interested in cornering the satellite-betting field than producing a track at Auburn.

Jay Sessler, a breeder and former president of the Fife group, says: "Every hour that goes by, you lose breeders, you lose fans, you lose jockeys . . ."

If Fife were ever to get back into the game, the governor would have to seriously consider a new commission. This one has a bias against it that won't go away.

NRA, which reduced its planned fill of wetlands from 53 acres to 17, is awaiting a permit decision from the Corps of Army Engineers that might not come until March.

There are two determinations to be made by the Corps - whether to require a federal environmental-impact-statement (EIS) study, which could take 18 months, and whether there is a viable alternative site that would cause no wetlands problems.

The EIS determination could be made by the Corps by Dec. 1. Shinpoch has said an 18-month delay probably would kill the Auburn site. But, based on previous commission decisions, it might not. How do you spell uncertainty?

More important is the Corps determination whether there is a viable alternative site. That could take until March 1 - or even longer. If the Corps decides there is an alternate site, Auburn is dead.

Then the whole process begins anew. The application process would have to be reopened. No one is certain who all the new players would be.

Expect lawsuits by NRA or environmentalists - depending on which way the Corps rules on the two questions

Don't expect the uncertainty to end soon. Don Hannula's column appears Thursday on editorial pages of The Times.