They’re off

By Melissa Grant
THE Pakenham Racing Club is on the move with horses to be bursting out of the barriers at an estimated $40 million state-of-the-art complex from the 2012-13 racing season.
Racing Victoria Limited (RVL) yesterday announced it would back the club’s plans to relocate to a 570-acre site near Nar Nar Goon.
The club will host 30 race meetings in its first season at the “New Pakenham” racecourse – the first track to be built in Victoria since Bairnsdale in the early ’70s.
Pakenham Racing Club racing manager Michael Hodge said the club had “a very bright future”, with the new development set to take Pakenham from a “small player in country racing to the top of the tree”.
A state-of-the-art 2300-metre grass track will be the centrepiece of the facility, complemented by a large grandstand. Night racing will also be catered for at the venue.
It is a stark contrast to six months ago when the club’s future looked bleak. It was named as one of 19 training centres to be closed statewide in a RVL and Country Racing Victoria draft directions paper, which outlined the future of the racing industry.
The club’s race meetings were to be culled to as few as five by 2011, its training centre shut-down and the 100-horse training population relocated to Cranbourne.
The only hope of survival was if RVL gave the club’s relocation plans the tick of approval – which it did yesterday when it announced its industry blueprint for the next five years and beyond.
Mr Hodge said the club had to satisfy the RVL that the proposal was viable and good for the Victorian racing industry.
“We’re obviously ecstatic the plan has been given approval from Racing Victoria Limited,” he said. “Not only do we service but we continue to sustain and grow.
“It’s a very bright future.”
The sale of the club’s current 74-acre site on Racecourse Road, Pakenham, a prime piece of real-estate, will help fund the move.
Mr Hodge has reassured trainers and members that proposed desalination plant powerlines wouldn’t derail the relocation project.
He said the club was confident the powerlines would be realigned or put underground, or at worse, around the facility.
The club is in the process of forming a design committee, which will meet for the first time this month.
Pakenham Racing Club members will this week receive letters advising them of the club’s relocation plans.
>>> Trainers overjoyed about new home, sport page 76.