Cover Stories Fall 2003

Florida's Key West Kennel Club and Seminole Greyhound Park Demolished

Stock Island: The long-closed Key West racetrack was demolished in mid-August to make way for Meridian West Apartments, a nine-building, 102-unit gated community for low-income residents. Meridian West is scheduled for completion by December 2004.

Racetrack History
The Key West Kennel Club operated from 1963 to Feb. 26, 1991 when a threat to public health caused by liquefied animal waste flowing through the parking lot forced the state Division of Pari-Mutuel Wagering to issue an Emergency Order of Suspension. It was the first time in 66 years of greyhound racing in Florida that the state shut down a racetrack in mid-season. The Key West Track never reopened.

The 16-page suspension order cited numerous violations of health, safety, and fire codes, which posed a danger to greyhounds and track personnel, and multiple violations of the state's pari-mutuel statutes, which misled the wagering public.

Between Oct. 31, 1990 and Feb. 21, 1991, four trainers abandoned their kennels; many of the 171 abandoned dogs were grossly underweight at the time of discovery. In mid-February, a state inspector discovered that 51 greyhounds had been removed from the premises in violation of a racing judge's order. The bodies of 15 of those dogs were dumped in the Cudjoe Key landfill before the state could determine how they were killed.

Sources: Keys News: Mandy Bolen; Miami Herald: Dan Keating (1991)

Casselberry: Seminole Greyhound Park, which operated from 1981 to 2001, was razed on Aug. 30. Demolition experts used carefully placed explosive charges to implode the structure, which took ten seconds to fall. The track, located on U.S. Highway 17-92, was demolished to make way for the expansion of a nearby church. Northland, A Church Distributed, bought the property after the track closed two years ago. Source: Orlando Sentinel: Christine S. Baumann

[Editor's Note: Six racetracks nationwide have now been demolished. The other four are: Biscayne in Florida, Black Hills and Sodrac in South Dakota, and Fox Valley in Wisconsin.]