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Shirley Leung

Whoa, there’s no rush to close Suffolk Downs

The Suffolk Downs track is expected to close.Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff

Joe O’Donnell, hold your horses and give Suffolk Downs one more season.

I know you and your business partner, Richard Fields, have been giving for a long time, propping up the money-losing, aging racetrack for years. But really, what’s another $10 million for gazillionaires? Your bank accounts probably generate more in interest.

The Joe we know is a generous guy, helping to raise more than a quarter of a billion of dollars for cystic fibrosis research and giving away millions more to Catholic schools and Harvard. Consider the racetrack another worthy cause.

I can imagine what you’re going to say to me next — and I have to imagine, because neither of you is talking to me. And it’s this: Easy for me to tell you how to spend your money. Rich guys stay rich by not frittering it away on losing propositions. Now that Steve Wynn has won the license for a $1.6 billion gambling palace in Everett, you’re shutting down the track and redeveloping it.

“No one has done more to preserve jobs in racing than Richard and Joe,” said Chip Tuttle, Suffolk Downs’s chief operating officer, as he sat in his wood-paneled office once occupied by Bill Veeck, the colorful Chicago White Sox owner who owned the track. “I don’t think it’s fair to ask them for anything more.”

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I can see why O’Donnell and Fields are in a hurry. Suffolk Downs is a hot property, for sure — close to Logan Airport and access to two Blue Line T stops — and where else can you find 150 acres of flat land to develop? Even without a casino, you’re going to hit the jackpot.

It’s just that the end is coming too swiftly for the 79-year-old track. The regular season concludes Sept. 29, leaving only five more days of live racing at a place that is loaded with history, where the legendary Seabiscuit ran and the Beatles played their last Boston show. The track will continue to simulcast until December when it will close for good.

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Give us more time to say goodbye — and more important, give some 1,000 workers a chance to find new jobs. For many of them, from the mutuel clerks to the horse trainers, this is the only work they have ever known. Think about 55-year-old Louis Ristaino, who has been an employee for 35 years, doing everything from parking cars to collecting bets.

“I will ride it out until the last day,” said Ristaino, who lives across the street from the track. “This is my bread and butter. This is my blood.”

Boy, he sounds like a Market Basket worker. If it helps, Joe and Richard, feel free to channel the spirit of Arthur T. Demoulas. Be the generous executives we know you can be, and keep Suffolk Downs strong one more year.

Now, guys, you probably think I’m going to ask you to consider keeping the track as a track. It’s not a completely crazy idea. The casino law, in part, was designed to keep the horse-racing industry alive in Massachusetts. When the slots begin to ka-ching and roulette wheels roll, a slice of the licensing fees and gambling revenues will go towards a horse-racing development fund that is expected to grow to $133 million.

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While the money doesn’t pour directly into the coffers of track operators like yourselves, the fund will boost purses, which attracts better horses, and, in turn, more fans. Ultimately, that would generate more revenue for track owners.

Still, the horse-racing business is not what it used to be so I don’t blame you for wanting to do something else. Whatever you do, think big and bold — just like you did with the idea of a $1 billion resort casino at Suffolk Downs. Keep the track operating another season, let the public in, and over the course of a year, gather groups of us in the Topsider Room to talk about the next chapter.

Don’t go for the easy money and build a strip mall, or yet another lifestyle shopping center with a Starbucks and an Ann Taylor. You can do better. Maybe take a page from Somerville, and construct another Assembly Row but on a grander scale — a mix of shops, restaurants, office, entertainment, hotel, and thousands of units of housing. Be liked enough to get Facebook to come back home to build a gleaming East Coast campus.

The bottom line: Don’t act like sore losers. You don’t need the neon lights to shine.


Shirley Leung is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at shirley.leung@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @leung.