Fate of horse track, farming program hinges on Hardwick vote Saturday
Photo | LandVest
Great Meadowbrook Farm is a 360-acre former dairy farm in Hardwick.
What to do with Great Meadowbrook Farm? That’s the question facing Hardwick residents as they head to the polls at Hardwick Elementary School on Saturday for a referendum vote on whether the former farm should be redeveloped into a horse breeding, retirement facility, and a racetrack, or if the land part of the state’s Agricultural Preservation Restriction (APR) Program will go back to the owners who are trying to sell it.
Polls will open at noon and close at 7 p.m. on Saturday.
The 395-acre property was purchased in 2021 by restaurateur Weidong “Wilson” Wang, the owner of Baba Sushi in Worcester, from Erik Fleming and Torrance Watkins, an Olympic equestrian. Wang’s development group proposed a marijuana facility on the land but has a purchase-and-sale agreement ending in February on the property with the Commonwealth Equine and Agricultural Center, which includes Richard Fields, one of the former owners of Suffolk Downs in Revere. Now the entire endeavor hangs in the balance with a town vote on Saturday that has come about after a series of twists and turns.
The town’s selectmen initially denied the application but was reconsidered after 400-plus signature petition was brought to them in favor of the development, so a second vote was taken and the plan was approved.
But that wasn’t the end of the ordeal. A second petition was brought to the selectmen with more than 300 signatures opposing the proposal, so the board decided to reconsider the development again. A third vote ended in a 2-1 vote in favor.
Now the residents get their chance to push the decision the way they like.
Cara Wilczynski is one of the people leading the charge against the proposal. She is the president of the campaign for the question on the town ballot, proposed by the group Hardwick Villages for Responsible Growth. The group has a podcast about the situation. Wilcynski grew up a quarter-mile from the farm. As a child, she used to walk to it from her childhood home in downtown Hardwick and watch the cows cross the road in the afternoon on their way back to the barn. She moved away and has returned to town to raise her own family. Her home now abuts the farm and she has no interest in a race track going in next door.
“It goes beyond not in my backyard,” Wilczynski told WBJ in a phone interview. “I wouldn’t want this in anyone’s backyard.”
The developers have promised $500,000 to the town as well as added revenue from jobs and taxes. But Wilczynski doesn’t see it that way. She sees the race track and gambling as a vice that doesn’t give back.
“It makes money at the expense of other people,” Wilczynski said.
For Paul Umbrello, the executive director of the New England Horsemen and Benevolence Protective Association, a race track is vital for his clients. This track would give them a place to race for the first time since Suffolk Downs in East Boston closed on June 30, 2019, two years after the track was sold to developers who turned the area into a housing and shopping district.
The proposal includes a horse breeding and training facility, as well as a sanctuary for retired racehorses and will host two days of racing a year. The stands, betting kiosks, and the racing fences will be installed only for the races and will not be permanent structures, according to the application for construction. As for other buildings on race days, Umbrello said tents will be brought in and disassembled after the races. The group expects between 3,000 and 5,000 visitors per day on race days for the next three years.
“Two days gives us all hope, and that’s all we need,” Umbrello said.
Umbrello told WBJ he doesn’t want 100 race days because it would not be feasible or affordable. It costs a lot of money to put on races. Instead, what the group needs is to continue to get proceeds from gambling to pay for thoroughbred horses, which comes from sports betting in the state and is split between thoroughbreds and standardbred horses. He said the track won’t be a casino and in fact can’t be a casino because of Massachusetts regulations. Instead, NEHBPA wants racing so when sports betting contracts go out for various gambling facilities and online gambling, the NEHBPA receives some of the proceeds from betting in the state, which includes people betting on races in other states through online gambling vendors like DraftKings. As part of the gaming contracts, NEHBPA receives a portion of sports betting to use to pay for purses, breeding, and the health and wellness of the animals.
While all of that sounds above board and even a bit promising, the move to take protected land supposed to be used for agricultural purposes and use it for horse racing and gambling has worried some farmers in the area.
Kate Stillman’s grandparents had an APR farm when she was growing up. Now one of her plots of land is an APR firm, and she’s worried about what this means for farmland in the state.
“Speaking as a farmer with my business hat on, the lump in our throats is real that this could really happen,” Stillman told WBJ in a phone interview.
Stillman owns Stillman Quality Meats in Hardwick.
The APR program was started in 1977, and almost 1,000 APR farms in the state account for more than 73,000 acres of protected land. The program allows farmers to sell part of their farmland for the cost of what would be developments at the time, and the state would pay for what it deems is the number of allotted development lots. The state then puts the land into a trust. From that point on, the land can only be used or sold for agricultural purposes. To become APR land, the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture tests the soil and does other tests and surveillance work to determine if the land is prime farming real estate.
Stillman’s first plot in town did not meet the criteria because the soil wasn’t deemed prime. So she knows the process and what it means. She knows when land is designated as APR, it loses value on the open market in the future because it can’t be sold to developers, only to farmers. For Stillman and her sister-in-law Halley Stillman, who also owns Still Life Farm in Hardwick, putting a race track on APR land could throw the entire system into disarray.
“You can’t farm if you don’t have land,” Halley said to WBJ in a phone interview.
Land is expensive in Massachusetts and by giving farmers the ability to pay for prime farming land at an affordable price, APR is vital to the business of local food.
If the residents of Harwick vote to pass the referendum in favor of the horse center, MDAR would need to approve the special permit for the land. So there is still hope even if the vote goes the way the farmers fear.
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