Developer Richard Fields likes to explain his quixotic quest for a thoroughbred racetrack in Massachusetts with sailing terms, not equestrian ones: You need to keep tacking to the left, and then to the right, to catch the wind.
Fields knows a thing or two about zigzagging.
The self-described horse enthusiast poured millions into Suffolk Downs — New England’s last thoroughbred horse track — only to watch its future evaporate when state gaming regulators in 2014 awarded the sole Greater Boston casino license to rival Wynn Resorts. As racing ended at Suffolk Downs in 2019, Fields and his Suffolk Downs partners set their sights on the other side of the state, in Great Barrington, but ran into local resistance.
