In the early hours of July 31, 1985, Tommy Trotter thought he smelled smoke.
“I’m a light sleeper,” he told the Tribune. “I went downstairs to check out the kitchen and it got stronger.” He could hear “cracking” in the ceiling.
The director of racing at Arlington Park racetrack in Arlington Heights, Trotter and his wife and son were staying on the second floor of the Horseman’s Lounge in the posh Post and Paddock Club. He woke up his wife, sent his son to notify security, and told the switchboard operator to call the fire department.
The enormity of the blaze was quickly apparent to firefighters.
“It went ‘bang, bang, bang, right up to five alarms,” said Bruce Rodewald, Arlington Heights’ fire chief. Two special alarms followed, summoning fire departments from Hoffman Estates, Rolling Meadows, Rosemont, Wheeling, Elk Grove Village, Buffalo Grove, Palatine and Des Plaines.
As firefighters arrived, two trainers salvaged 2,000 documents with the identification numbers of horses that raced at Arlington. ”Those foal papers we got out of there are like the title to a car,” Arthur Blaze, a trainer, said. “You can’t run a horse without them on any track.”
The racetrack opened in 1927; the Post and Paddock Club followed two years later and was periodically remodeled. There were false ceilings and sealed off spaces — through which the fire could travel unseen by firefighters. Some used chain saws, desperately trying to find the flames before they reached the wooden grandstands.
“My first thought was of the last fire I went through at Garden State Park, in Cherry Hill, New Jersey,” an Arlington Park jockey told a Sun-Times reporter. Three people were killed there in 1977. Neither humans nor horses perished in the Arlington Park blaze. The fire never reached the stables.
That was all the more miraculous. A watchman at Arlington told the Tribune the firefighters couldn’t attack the blaze until security officers brought a key to its gate.
Joseph Joyce, the track’s president and part owner, got a phone call at his Oak Park home shortly after 2 a.m. He threw on a pink blazer and headed to the track.
“I was banging on the steering wheel,” he told the Sun-Times. “The traffic was so slow. I just kept saying to myself, ‘I just hope it isn’t the grandstand. If it wasn’t, we’d be up and kicking in a couple of days.’”
“We got here about 3 o’clock,” said Des Plaines Fire Chief Don Schultz. The fire was contained by midmorning but later it got out of control, he told the Tribune.
Water was pumped from a pond on the grounds, and sprinklers ran continuously, but the fire grew.
At 10:45 am, Army demolition experts from Fort Sheridan. arrived at the racetrack. Fire chiefs thought that, as a last resort, they could contain the fire by blowing up part of the grandstand.
But the fire beat them to it. By noon it was obvious that the clubhouse and grandstands were goners, and firefighters were ordered to evacuate immediately.
One firefighter ignored calls of “Get Out! Get Out!” He slowly plodded on, eventually reaching safety on the infield grass.
By then, firefighters were exhausted. Some had battled the flames for upward of nine and 10 hours. One crew started fighting the fire on the grandstand’s third level before beating a hasty retreat.
“The thing crawled up the side of a wall,” Arlington’s Heights Deputy Chief David Mills recalled. “When it started to hit the roof, I said:’ Lets get the hell out of here!”
The next morning, there were two vexatious problems. How could the smoking ruins of a racetrack host the fifth running of the Arlington Million? The owners also had to think about the grooms, exercise riders and stable hands. Thrown out work by the fire, how were they going to feed their families?
“The thing we have to do first is to make sure everyone is fed,” Dick Duchossois, the track’s principal owner, told the Tribune for an Aug. 2 story headlined “Arlington stirs among the ashes.” “These people are dependent on our ability to give them a place to earn money and that’s the next thing we’ll do. You’ll never see more loyal people than you have here. We’ll try to reciprocate every way we can.”
“At noon, the track kitchen was packed with grooms and other stable hands partaking of food provided by the racetrack,” the Tribune reported.
“A few hours later, Arlington’s President Joseph Joyce told the horsemen a tentative agreement to resume the meeting next week at Hawthorne,” a racetrack in Cicero. Some of Arlington’s horses would be moved to Hawthorne’s barns. Others would become commuters.
“Every day they van horses from track to track in New York and Florida,” trainer Lou Goldfine said. “There’s no reason we can’t do that from here Hawthorne.”
By then, “95 percent of the people who were employed when the meeting began at Arlington were working at Hawthorne,” said Joyce. “And the remaining 5 percent weren’t because they chose not to.”
Heatherten, a 6-year-old mare, registered her objections to Arlington’s shift to Hawthorne. “She absolutely hates to ride in a van,” her trainer said “She gets mad and nervous, and when she does that she makes everyone else nervous.”
But she settled down at Hawthorne and a won the Grade II Matron Handicap and a $49,412 purse.
The Arlington Million race wasn’t transferred elsewhere. Not that it didn’t have offers. But because it wouldn’t have a racetrack to return to, noted Tribune columnist Bernie Lincicome.
The Million, racing’s largest purse when it debuted, gave Arlington Park the visibility enjoyed by Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, which hosts the Kentucky Derby. For Arlington to survive, the Million couldn’t skip a season, Joyce told Lincicome.
“The first estimate for the removal of 7,000 tons of steel and 14,000 tons of other debris was three months,” the Tribune reported. But a Los Angeles contractor said: “We can do it for you in 13 days.”
The track’s owners and construction executives calculated what could be built in time for the Aug. 25 race:
Temporary bleachers and red and white tents would replace the Post and Paddock Club. Those who had reserved seats at the real Post and Paddock Club got choice locations in the ersatz one.
It got done and the race was run Aug. 25. Some of those in attendance had also witnessed the fire.
“I stood by the fence for half an hour and just watched and cried,” Lani Kaegi of Milwaukee told the Tribune, recalling the blaze. “I’ve been coming here for 15 years. It was so sad.”
She was among 35,000 fans who saw Teleprompter, a horse from Great Britain, win the Miracle Million, as it was heralded.
The event’s s unlikely success sparked a rumor that Arlington would run races on Labor Day. Spiking that rumor, Arlington’s owners noted they had a gentleman’s agreement with the Carey family that owned Hawthorne racetrack to run Arlington’s races there, except for the Million.
“When we needed the Careys, we didn’t even have to ask, said Arlington’s CEO. “They were right there, doing everything they could to help.”
With that, the Arlington story ceased to be a potential script for a feel-good movie. It was replaced by a lesson in the brutal economics of horse racing. Having received Arlington’s racing dates, other owners weren’t willing to give them up.
For 1986, Arlington was given only 13 dates as the rebuilding effort continued. Subsequently the grandstands went back up and the number of dates was increased, but ultimately it wasn’t enough to save the track as the popularity of horse racing continued to dwindle into the 21st century.
In 2021, Churchill Downs, the track’s owner, entered into an agreement to sell the property to the Chicago Bears. The team is still negotiating plans for a new stadium on the site, while also not fully closing the door on remaining in Chicago.
Season ticket holders were asked their preferences in a survey that included a diagram of a new stadium. The team will ultimately have to decide if that jigsaw puzzle piece fits better in the suburbs or the city.
Ron Grossman is a columnist emeritus for the Chicago Tribune. His columns vary from social and political commentary to chapters in Chicago history. Before turning to journalism, Grossman was a history professor. He is the author of “Guide to Chicago Neighborhoods.”
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