Jockey racing silks that will soon be up for online auction at Arlington International Racecourse, Aug. 29, 2022. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)
After babysitting for jockeys’ kids at Arlington International Racecourse, then working the betting window for 20 years, Jeanne Hoogerhyde had spent much of her life at the track. Now that it’s closed, she wants to take a little piece of it home with her.
So she was back at the track Monday, checking out some of the hundreds of items from the facility that are being sold at a series of online auctions. She and her husband already bought a bench from the grandstand for $450. They also were checking out other items and reliving memories.
“There’s never going to be another place like this,” she said. “There was something about being outside at the track with your family and friends. The horses were beautiful, the fireworks were fun. I loved it.”
Owners Churchill Downs Inc. closed the track last year and entered a preliminary agreement to sell the site in Arlington Heights for $197 million to the Chicago Bears, who have proposed building a football stadium there.
Though the land could hold both the track and a football stadium, the Bears have said they’re not interested in conducting racing on the 326-acre site. Weeds now grow high along the rail, and the stables and rows of backstretch apartments sit empty. It seems likely the facility, which Architectural Digest once named the most beautiful racetrack in the country, will be torn down.
That means everything must go. In a series of up to 15 planned auctions, Grafe Auction is selling off furniture, signs, art work and bronze sculptures, trash cans, saddle towels and jockey numbers muddied in races, and a few jockey silks.
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