Call to horse owners to 'seize' control floods Fredericton Exhibition with new members

An attempt by Horse Racing New Brunswick to "seize" control of the group in charge of the exhibition grounds in Fredericton is likely responsible for more than doubling the number of memberships. 

But the executive director of the New Brunswick Provincial Exhibition isn't sure which of the competing issues the new applicants support — new housing or a return to harness racing. 

Whatever their motivation, Mike Vokey said his group received 250 new membership requests by the Dec. 30 deadline. 

Vokey said it's likely that "a significant number" of those joined in response to the Dec. 10 invitation, from Horse Racing New Brunswick, for people to obtain memberships and positions on the exhibition board, which was previously known as the Fredericton Exhibition board, but commonly called FREX for short.

In a Facebook video, the executive members of racing group invited horse enthusiasts to flood the exhibition group with members in order to take control of future decisions.

While Vokey called the message "a little aggressive," he said having more members and "more diverse voices"  is actually good for the organization. 

He said whether the voices really are diverse or single-minded in reinstating harness racing in Fredericton won't become apparent until the annual general meeting. 

The meeting is normally held in April or May and the date usually isn't set until March. 

If it truly is an attempted coup, Vokey said the members can call for a special meeting to be held before the AGM. 

For now, though, harness racing in the province is in limbo. 

Last-minute offer

There have been no races in Fredericton in six years, and activities wrapped up in Saint John on Dec. 31 when the lease expired at Exhibition Park Raceway.  

In a statement, the exhibition association said, "The Board has made the decision to position itself to be able to explore opportunities that may have the potential to make better use of the lands and facilities, thus providing a greater service to the greater Saint John community."

Horse Racing N.B., which operates the track and had its offices there, made a last-minute offer that included a rent increase, but the association board members didn't budge.

Despite repeated phone calls and emails, no one, including Guy Barbara, president of the horse racing group, responded to interview requests. 

According to the Facebook video of the meeting in Saint John, vice-president Charlie Miles said a few "horse people" were elected to the NBEx board at last May's annual general meeting, and other positions are due to expire this spring. 

He urged horse racing enthusiasts from across the province to buy $20 memberships in order to have voting rights for the next board election. 

"If we want to seize that track we can," Barbara said in the video.

But Vokey isn't sure it's as easy as the horse owners think. 

"It's my understanding that zoning has changed to allow for some development," he said. 

The City of Fredericton, however, has not responded to a request for clarification about whether the property is still zoned to allow horse racing.

 Either way, Vokey is confident that cooler heads will prevail and FREX and the city will continue on the current path of "compromise." 

After all, he said he could never have envisioned 10 years ago, being on the same side of a development plan as the city. He said the exhibition group spent about 30 years fighting to maintain its existence as one of the country's few "urban fair" grounds. 

Vokey said the group saw what happened to other such facilities in the country, including Ottawa and Calgary and soon realized that they had to "embrace change" and salvage what they could, rather than continue to fight and risk ending up with nothing. 

No room for harness racing

That resulted in the current plan with the city to develop part of the 31-acre downtown property for badly needed housing, while still maintaining much of the land and nearly all of the activities. 

But, said Vokey, there is no room in that plan for harness racing in downtown Fredericton in the long term. 

He hopes that horse owners will see the business model that has already proven effective for the Fredericton grounds — use what they have to generate more income. 

Vokey said the board's decision to pursue money-making events has really paid off. Instead of renting out to events like markets, fairs and ribfests, the group does the work itself and reinvests the profits in personnel and upgrades to the facilities. 

"We went from 10-11 events a year to 55 events a year. So that brought in more revenue and then it allowed us to fix the place up," he said.  

Similarly, the board is looking at selling roughly 15 acres for the proposed housing project. That, said Vokey, maintains enough land for current operations and should bring in between $10 and $15 million. 

Vokey said the FREX board has already talked about buying land outside the city to host larger-type events like "tractor pulls and demolition derbies."

"You know, there's lots of things besides harness racing that don't happen in downtown Fredericton, but … could happen in a kind of a satellite location," he said. 

Selling a piece of prime real estate in Fredericton's core could help pay for that, he said, and harness racing could be a part of that. 

"There are concerns that … if it's pro-development it must be negative on agriculture, but actually it's opposite because with our development plan, the revenues that come through, it's allowed us to renovate the barn … All of our agriculture events now benefit from these newly renovated barns and ensures sustainability."

Vokey said he looks forward to working with all groups to discuss common goals and working on a solution together, but he is concerned the harness-racing group may "jeopardize the relationship with the city, which is super important."