Hundreds filed into Northlands Park on Saturday (Feb. 23) for a final farewell, which came in the form of a public auction that served to liquidate the remainder of the facility’s assets.
According to an article by CTV News Edmonton, the assets drew interest from across the country.
“There are a lot of hearts in here today that are probably going to be sad, to be honest,” said one auction-goer. More than 4,000 unique items hit the auction block, ranging from memorabilia, furniture, equipment, and everything in between.
One of the unique pieces of racing memorabilia that was part of the Northlands auction
“It’s a little sad to finally see the building come to a close,” said Scott Sinclair, Northlands’s director of racing and gaming. “This is basically the final chapter of Northlands Park.”
“It’s sad for sure,” former trainer/driver Darryl Litke has said in regard to racing leaving Northlands. “I mean, we’re talking over 100 years of racing. The Oilers were good and the betting was great. Horse racing was big. It was huge.”
Litke’s comments were published in 2018 as part of a Northlands Park retrospective by Curtis Stock for Horse Racing Alberta.
Roughly $50,000 worth of alcohol was part of the Northlands auction
Racing first took place at Northlands in 1910. The track officially closed last month. Area racing is now scheduled to relocate to the Century Mile Racetrack and Casino, which is located northeast of the Edmonton International Airport.
Children’s tricycles, fitted to look like horses, were part of the Northlands auction
It was expected that Saturday’s auction would have raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars. The online auction will close Tuesday night (Feb. 26).
(With files from CTV News Edmonton and the CBC)