But most importantly, the club still has the support of its bank, Westpac.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we told the bank the deal was off, they said we have no reason to panic, because they aren\u2019t,\u201d ATC president James MacKinnon said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bank have been very supportive and they realise that we still have a lot of assets.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t lost an asset through Oyster Capital pulling out, it just means this deal is off the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have instructed Colliers to inform other parties who were interested before Oyster Capital started their due diligence but if nothing comes of that, the property will be re-advertised around February or March next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are getting close to Christmas and you don\u2019t tend to get a lot people working on large property deals like this in December and January so it might be late summer before the process starts again.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the sale falling through creates uncertainty, it also leaves the ATC having to pay an eye-watering $450,000 per month in interest, which is loaded on to their $80m-plus debt.<\/p>\n
The club has moved quickly to capitalise some of its remaining Alexandra Park assets, putting the commercial units it owns at the base of the apartment buildings on the market.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have had instant interest in those and altogether, they could be worth as much as $25 million,\u201d MacKinnon said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat also helps with the bank, for them to see we have money coming in.\u201d<\/p>\n
The club is confident it will be able to sell Franklin Park and pay down the majority of its whopping debt and the most extreme action, the sale of Alexandra Park, is not on the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnder the Auckland Unitary Plan, it is a special-use facility which primarily has to used for racing,\u201d MacKinnon said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo even start the process to get that changed could take years and we aren\u2019t looking at that at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have enough assets to clear the debt but we are going to need help from the industry to help with our future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even if the commercial units at Alexandra Park and then Franklin Park are eventually sold and the Auckland Trotting Club\u2019s debts are paid off, another issue remains: building a replacement training facility for Franklin Park to house and train horses.<\/p>\n
Right now, that feels like a problem for another day. <\/p>\n
But it is one that isn\u2019t going to go away when and if the ATC solves its more immediate issues.<\/p>\n
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald\u2019s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world\u2019s biggest horse racing carnivals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But most importantly, the club still has the support of its bank, Westpac. \u201cWhen we told the bank…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[76563,74,806,51,23748,1643,17940,138,46729,18836,38691,3468,5399,29434,15248,13989,305,14568,101,111,139,69,1523,814,3512,1133,165,8229,210,61,76562],"class_list":{"0":"post-106062","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-80m","9":"tag-after","10":"tag-as","11":"tag-auckland","12":"tag-backing","13":"tag-bank","14":"tag-bosses","15":"tag-business","16":"tag-carry","17":"tag-club","18":"tag-crucial","19":"tag-deal","20":"tag-debt","21":"tag-enormous","22":"tag-falls","23":"tag-fell","24":"tag-have","25":"tag-horse","26":"tag-left","27":"tag-new-zealand","28":"tag-newzealand","29":"tag-nz","30":"tag-over","31":"tag-property","32":"tag-racing","33":"tag-sale","34":"tag-their","35":"tag-they","36":"tag-through","37":"tag-to","38":"tag-trotting"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}