Kawartha Downs Up For Sale

Published: November 2, 2018 11:20 am EDT

Reports indicate that the for sale sign is up at Kawartha Downs with estimates that the property is worth in the area of $20 million.

According to an article in the Peterborough Examiner, the sale sign is not an indication that the future of the track is in peril. It was, in fact, expected.

Kawartha Downs entered court-ordered receivership in May 2017 after the track’s former owner, Harvey ‘Skip’ Ambrose, was forced to relinquish control of the raceway. Ambrose had been unable to get out from underneath roughly $97 million in debt that his businesses owed, collectively.

Several of Ambrose’s companies had fallen into receivership in 2015, but, at the time, Kawartha Downs was not one of them. The raceway went into receivership when a loan from a private lender was not paid back in time.

"It's the end result of the receivership process," Orazio Valente, the general manager of Kawartha Downs told The Examiner. "Coming out of receivership is a good thing because it removes uncertainty."

The reassurance comes at a time when the future of the slots operation at Kawartha Downs remains unclear. After OLG revealed that some of the existing slots would stay at the Fraserville location, a timeline for reopening has yet to be announced.

Valente told The Examiner that the reopening of the slots is not contingent on a sale of the property.

Written offers can be made on the property, advertised on Thursday in The Globe and Mail by insolvency and restructing firm Rosen Goldberg of Toronto, until November 30 at 5:00 p.m.

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