Want to buy a dog track? Sedgwick County might have one for sale

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the ownership of buildings at the site.

Ten years after the last dog race was held there, Sedgwick County is considering selling the Wichita Greyhound Park to the highest bidder.

This week, the County Commission is scheduled to vote on putting the county-owned land underlying the park up for sale at a public auction.

The auction would be conducted live and be arranged by the county staff at a date to be determined, officials said.

Gambling magnate Phil Ruffin, who owns the greyhound operation, shut it down in 2007 after Sedgwick County voters narrowly rejected slot machines at the race track.

At the time, the Greyhound Park hosted live dog racing and satellite wagering on horse races around the country, but Ruffin said he couldn’t make a profit on race wagering alone.

County commissioners said Ruffin has sought to buy the property in recent months. He currently controls most of the property there through a long-term lease.

Ruffin’s company built and owns the buildings at the site under its agreement with the county. The buildings only become county property if the company defaults on the land lease or at the end of the agreement in 2039, county officials said.

Greyhound Park includes an 80,000-square-foot auditorium/grandstand building on 122 acres adjacent to the I-135 freeway near Park City, according to county records. The property also includes about 26,000 square feet of dog kennels.

Commissioners Richard Ranzau and Jim Howell said they’re not sure they want to sell the land.

For years, Ruffin has sought to get a revote on slots at the track, with his Statehouse lobbyist arguing that the original ballot measure was too confusingly worded to truly gauge the sentiment of voters.

So far, it’s gone nowhere in the Legislature.

But Howell said the makeup of the Legislature has changed. Many lawmakers who fought expanded gambling are gone and a revote on slots at the track could be approved at some point, he said.

In the Legislature, “If at first you don’t succeed, you try, try, try, try, try, try again,” said Howell, a former state representative.

Howell said he’s leaning against selling the greyhound park.

As long as the county owns the track property, it can remain unincorporated, and the county would get a 2 percent share of any future gambling revenue if it reopens, Howell said.

If it’s sold to a private buyer, Park City could annex the land and split the 2 percent with the county, Howell said.

Also, he said, if the track reopens as a slot-machine gambling establishment, it could siphon business from the Kansas Star Casino at Mulvane, which has a 25-year exclusive deal with the state to operate gambling in the region.

Howell represents the Sedgwick County portion of Mulvane, which straddles the Sedgwick-Sumner county line. He said Mulvane has made a lot of plans for public improvements based on projected casino income and he wouldn’t want to derail them.

The 2007 vote on slots at the track was part of a larger expansion of gambling that has allowed the state Lottery to establish casinos that are technically owned by the state, but run by private operators.

In the same election that sounded the death knell for the dog track, Sedgwick County rejected a destination casino, leading to the development of the Kansas Star just south of the county line in Mulvane.

Ranzau said he’s not sure it would be in the county’s financial interest to sell the dog track, assuming Ruffin will continue to make lease payments.

The greyhound park once employed 256 people and was part of a major entertainment complex, along with the adjacent Kansas Coliseum.

The main auditorium at the Coliseum was shuttered in 2010 after the county built the Intrust Bank Arena in downtown Wichita. It later sold to a developer and became a satellite campus of Wichita State University’s aircraft research program.

The Coliseum’s pavilions, used mainly for trade shows and animal events, closed early this year.

This story was originally published November 27, 2017 at 5:49 PM with the headline "Want to buy a dog track? Sedgwick County might have one for sale."