Firefighters battle blaze at shuttered Balmoral Park grandstand

Fire tore through the vacant grandstand at Balmoral Park just before 6 a.m. Sunday, sending flames through the roof of the long-closed harness track in Crete Township and drawing crews from multiple communities to a building that once sat at the center of Chicago-area racing.

No firefighter injuries were reported, but the blaze moved fast enough to force defensive operations and trigger a public warning about smoke and haze. Crete police also closed Route 1 between Crete-Monee Road and Elms Court Lane so emergency vehicles could get in and out of the area while crews kept working the fire scene into the evening.

That Balmoral still commands attention says plenty about what it meant before the last horse left the gate. The track opened in 1926 and hosted harness racing until the end of the 2015 season, making the 100-year-old property one of the region’s most recognizable racing landmarks. Even after the races stopped, the site never fully disappeared from the sport’s map. It remained a reference point for horsemen, bettors and fans who knew what it had once been: a major harness venue with a real footprint in the south suburbs.

Its post-racing life was just as revealing. The 200-acre property sold for $1.7 million in 2016 and was later transformed into a show-jumping facility by Horse Shows in the Sun, or HITS. The converted site included 10 arenas, renovated stables and a 4,400-seat grandstand, and it was listed for sale again at $4 million in 2020. The deed also prohibited gambling there until 2026, a detail that underscored how tightly the property’s future had been tied to racing and gaming law even after the harness meet ended.

That history makes the fire more than a building loss. Balmoral had already become a case study in how racing infrastructure ages out, gets repurposed and then sits in limbo when the sport’s economics no longer support a return. In 2019, developer Philip Goldberg’s group had sought to buy the property with plans to bring harness racing back and possibly add a casino, but horsemen were skeptical and state-law changes would have been needed because Balmoral sat in Will County, not an eligible township under the law at the time.

The Illinois State Fire Marshal is investigating the cause of the blaze. What remains now is a charred reminder that in Illinois racing, the buildings can outlast the business, but not always by much.