CHICAGO – The Illinois Racing Board declined to issue a 2020 Illinois racing schedule during its annual dates award meeting Tuesday, voting unanimously to reconvene Tuesday, Sept. 24 after giving Churchill Downs Inc. an opportunity to reconsider the possibility of turning Arlington International Racecourse into a racino. CDI in late August announced it wouldn’t apply for a license to operate a casino at Arlington despite having sought such a chance for years, and the IRB, with commissioner Thomas McCauley at the vanguard, came down hard on that position. CDI in an August news release and Arlington president Tony Petrillo on Tuesday said the conditions under which Arlington would operate a casino weren’t financially favorable enough to go forward. But McCauley chastened Petrillo for what he said was CDI’s attempt to pressure the Illinois legislature to alter those terms. “My position is the solution already is there and Churchill rejected the solution,” McCauley said. “I don’t think there’s going to be any other solution. Much less for horse racing, that took 20 years to get this.” Along with the motion to push the dates awards back a week, the IRB created a three-person committee with former executive director (and current consultant) Marc Laino as a “liaison” between the IRB and CDI. McCauley and the IRB made clear that Arlington’s license to operate a racetrack was endangered by its rejection of the casino. The IRB’s core mission is to maximize state revenues created by horse racing, and commissioners, led by McCauley, questioned CDI’s commitment to the sport. CDI owns a 61 percent stake in Rivers Casino, the largest gaming palace in Illinois, and is said to be interested in acquiring a share of one of the new Illinois casinos that can open through the gambling expansion law. “Is Churchill Downs even a horse racing enterprise anymore?” McCauley asked Petrillo. Petrillo couldn’t provide satisfactory answers to nearly all the board’s challenging questions in great part because he’s not on CDI’s executive team, which ultimately will determine Arlington’s fate. No CDI representatives testified before the board on Tuesday. Petrillo after the meeting said he’d expected tough questioning but was blindsided by the IRB’s demands. The IRB during the coming week will consider several 2020 schedules including one where Arlington doesn’t race. The prospect of a Chicago circuit operating without its flagship venue as early as next year comes less than three months after Illinois racing interests thought the gambling-expansion legislation had rescued the state’s flagging industry, which is competing with nearby jurisdictions that supplement purses through casino revenue.   The gambling expansion legislation permitting racetrack casinos passed somewhat suddenly in June, and Hawthorne Racecourse, which sits on Chicago’s border southwest of downtown, already has committed to building a casino and operating the maximum 1,200 gambling positions permitted Chicago-area tracks. Fairmount Park across the state border from St. Louis also plans to move as quickly as possible to open a casino. The gambling bill also provided for the construction of a new harness racing track, which if all proceeds apace will open in the south Chicago suburb of Tinley Park. Rick Heidner, the principal of Playing in the Park LLC, the company that plans to build and open the track along with Tim Carey of Hawthorne, told the IRB that the new facility could be open at the end of 2020. But the whole enterprise remains in its infancy. The land where the track would be built was a State of Illinois mental-health facility whose buildings still stand, and the state still owns the property. Heidner said plans already were in place to conduct environmental remediation and construct a 4,000-seat grandstand, a one-mile harness-racing oval, and a 224-room hotel on the 182-acre parcel. “If we don’t get licensed now, we lose a year and everyone loses a year,” said Heidner. “We understood this is an ask, but this is a huge project that’s going to take a huge commitment and it’d be nice to know you’re licensed.” Construction of a new racetrack took on added urgency when CDI rejected the Arlington casino. Hawthorne has become the only harness-racing track left in Illinois, and if Arlington ceases running or has its season curtailed, and Hawthorne is committed to running a summer harness meet, the Chicago Thoroughbred season would fall apart, at least in 2020. “To be honest, I’m not sure what would happen,” said David McCaffrey, executive director of the Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association. “We didn’t really see this coming today.” Hawthorne didn’t apply for a spring 2020 Thoroughbred meeting, citing the difficulties of racing during the casino construction project expected to begin in February, but Carey, pressed by the board, conceded an early-year Thoroughbred meet could be conducted if absolutely required. Fairmount wants to race 60 days during 2020, up from 40 in 2019, and plans to add six Friday cards to its standard Tuesday and Saturday race weeks. The gambling bill requires Fairmount to host a least 700 races per year once its casino is operational. While Carey, the track president, said Hawthorne won’t open a temporary casino, that remains a possibility for Fairmount, said general manager Brian Zander. Arlington applied for a meet like the one it recently conducted, running from early May through mid-September, but the IRB, typically amenable to Arlington’s wishes, rebuked its parent company’s tactics. McCauley said that CDI’s statement that it was committed to racing at Arlington in 2020 and 2021 felt “more like a threat than a commitment,” and a section of the August CDI release referring to a potential relocation of the racetrack within Illinois especially chuffed McCauley. “Does Churchill Downs think it owns this license? We have the authority to grant that privilege to those that deserve it,” he said. Petrillo testified that Arlington had opposed the gambling expansion bill as early as March, staking out a position in favor of sports betting and against racetrack casinos. Other racing parties involved with legislative negotiations dispute that claim, and Tuesday, the IRB basically told CDI to get behind horse racing in Illinois or get out of the business here entirely. The published application date for racetrack casino licenses passed several weeks ago, but there’s belief here that the Illinois Gaming Board has left open a loophole for late application. Within a week, it will be known if CDI plans to pursue it.