The abandoned million Pinnacle Race Course near Detroit Metro Airport is being demolished. The thoroughbred horse racetrack opened in during the recession in 2008 and closed in 2010. Attorney Camille Iurillo, representing owner Jerry Campbell, wrote in court documents, “In hindsight, the timing for the opening of the track could not have been worse.”
This summer Campbell and Wayne County Executive Warren Evans’ administration settled on an agreement to clean out the 320-acre site in order to make room for development. The county had threatened Post It Stables, the racetrack’s corporate entity, with legal action unless a “nuisance abatement” occurred, said Wayne County spokesman Ryan Bridges. “Everyone knows that this was a terrible business deal,” Bridges said.
The property had been for sale for $8 million, with an unpaid tax bill of $2.3 million. Campbell recently filed for bankruptcy citing at least $4.8 million in unpaid debt related to the racetrack project.
When it opened, the Pinnacle track was considered a significant economic development project for the county, which invested $26.6 million in infrastructure. Campbell and other investors bought the 320-acre property for $1 from the Wayne County Land Bank in return for promising to create or retain 1,100 construction jobs and 1,200 full-time permanent jobs, or suffer financial penalties based on the estimated market value of the land, at the time $8.6 million. Later a report by the Wayne County Auditor General said the land bank’s bookkeeping was so poor, auditors could not accurately count the Pinnacle job numbers, which counted UPS delivery people as full-time jobs.
The Pinnacle track struggled financially almost from the beginning and quickly fell behind on property taxes. It lost $2.5 million in 2009 and $4.8 million in 2010. Even efforts to turn Pinnacle into a racino were unsuccessful.
In a 2014 interview with the Detroit Free Press, Campbell said he invested more than $6 million in cash in Pinnacle “and lost it all and then some. When the track closed down, I paid a number of the corporate obligations with my own personal funds.” He and his wife no live in Florida, he is chairman, president and chief executive officer of Tampa-based HomeBancorp. According to Campbell’s bankruptcy filings, the couple own two properties in Florida and three in Michigan; he earned a base salary of $472,500 in 2015 from his bank and may still receive a bonus.
Campbell was a lead business partner with the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, which is awaiting Bureau of Indian Affairs approval of its application to open off-reservation casinos in Lansing and also near the shuttered Pinnacle track in an empty megachurch building in Romulus. The tribe bought seven acres at the Pinnacle track in 2010 for a reported $179,000–part of the same acreage that the Wayne County Land Bank sold for $1 to Campbell and his investors.
In addition, the Sault tribe opened the Greektown Casino in Detroit as a non-tribal venture but lost it in a 2008 bankruptcy. James Nye, spokesman for a coalition of tribal governments and Detroit’s three Detroit casinos, which all oppose the Sault’s casino plans, said, “It is more than ironic that both the Sault tribe and its principal investor in off-reservation casino schemes have now both gone bankrupt.”
Sault Tribe General Counsel John Wernet said, “Mr. Campbell has been a valuable partner and supporter of the Sault Tribe for many years. While his personal financial circumstances are unfortunate, our proposed casinos in Michigan include a number of investors. Mr. Campbell’s personal financial situation has no bearing or material effect on our projects.”
