North Dakota Horse Park gets finances on track as 2025 season takes shape

FARGO — Slowly, the North Dakota Horse Park in Fargo is growing its live horse racing meet and for the first time in nearly a decade, the organization that runs the track is not scrambling to make the tax payment that once loomed over it.

The Fargo track is operated by Horse Race North Dakota, a nonprofit organization that contributed when the track was built in 2003.

At a meeting of Horse Race North Dakota on Friday, Dec. 20. Cindy Slaughter, accountant and co-owner of TaxLady, which contracts with Horse Race North Dakota, said the track’s overall income is up about $93,000 from this time last year.

A fourth weekend of racing cost the track about $148,000 this year. However, that cost can be offset in the future by factors such as attendance and the amount bet on the races.

“There’s a couple of things we could do differently this year to reduce that amount,” North Dakota Horse Park General Manager Hugh Alan Drexler said.

While Drexler and HRND will look to decrease costs, they will not try to do that at the expense of the horsemen, as they hope to keep purses for each race flat or increase them in 2025.

“I don’t want to cut the purses at all, that would be the last thing we would cut,” HRND President Jay Aslop said.

“That is what our goal is, to promote racing and to increase race dates,” Drexler said. “The day the finances don’t look the same, that is when we need to make a change.”

Live racing receives additional funds from the North Dakota Racing Commission. The commission will meet in February to determine the amount of funds that will be granted to the Fargo track as well as Chippewa Downs, the second horse racing track in North Dakota near Belcourt.

Heavy special assessments loomed over the North Dakota Horse Park for several years after it opened.

In 2003, the city of Fargo spent $1.5 million to extend sewer, water and other infrastructure to the track. The city planned to recoup the costs with special assessments, a kind of property tax assessed to benefiting properties, but the city agreed to suspend the assessments for five years in hopes that the race track would stimulate the development of commercial and residential properties. This would spread the assessments over more property owners and create a smaller bill for the track, which in 2015 was about $1.9 million.

The track is now in repayment of its taxes, making annual payments to the city of Fargo, and accountants are confident a fourth weekend of racing in 2025 will not adversely affect the track.

“I don’t have any concerns about running a fourth weekend this year,” Slaughter said.

Horse racing will be held at the Fargo track in 2025 over four weekends, likely July 12 through Aug. 3, track officials said.

“(It will be) some combination of either Friday, Saturday or Saturday, Sunday depending on what other events are going on in the area,” said Drexler.

In 2024, attendance at the Fargo track was up overall with about 8,358 in attendance over the eight race days, up from about 8,127, in 2023.

The Fargo track held horse races on Saturday and Sunday afternoons for four consecutive weekends, starting Saturday, July 13. The weekend of July 27-28, races were held in the evening so as to not compete with the Fargo AirSho. The horse park competed for attendance each weekend as the Fargo Street Fair, Red River Valley Fair and the Renaissance Fair overlapped the schedule. The horse park’s closing weekend coincided with WeFest.

The track hosted only three weekends of racing in 2022 and 2023, as it was constricted to operating expenses and the amount of money granted for a live season by the North Dakota Racing Commission. The Fargo track hosted a four-week meet in 2021 but held only two weekends in 2020.