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l Q&A NORTH COUNTY BUSINESS JOURNAL x SUMMER 2016 x sdnedc.org At MiraCosta College, our students are inspired to dream more, learn more, do more, become more. Learn about some recent graduates by visiting miracosta.edu/meet. ey are tomorrow's business leaders. Today, they are ready to work for you. owned by the State of California, and the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club is strictly an operating company. This means that the State of California gets 100 percent of the profits, which go into a capital improvement fund. The State oversees that fund, and they have budget approval for us. When we need to do renovations or expansions or we're looking to hire more people, we have to propose our plans to the state's racing commission that oversees our fund. The nice thing about this is we're very conservative when it comes to the money we spend. It also means that profits from racing can go right back into the facility. Every- thing you see being done here – the maintenance, any structural construc- tion work – it's all funded by racing rev- enue, not taxpayers' money. We have a great partnership with the State. It's really a perfect marriage, and a good mixture of private enterprise and public works. ••• What are some of the challenges of running the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club? We're lucky at Del Mar because we've been successful for a lot of years, but there are always challenges. In the past year we've conducted extensive market research to determine ways we can improve – we're always trying to find out why the people that don't come to races aren't coming, and what the people who do come would like to see us do better. The main challenge I worry about is the product – the horses, and the availability of racers. When the economy went down, people stopped breeding horses. Percentages are higher now, but we're still suffering slightly from that downturn almost a decade ago. We also face competition from other tracks that are competing for horses. Racers often select a track based on that track's revenue, and tracks that have slot machine revenues, for example, can have higher revenues than we do based on those machines alone. But we've come up with some great ways to se- cure racers – bonuses for out-of-town- ers, for example – and we've created relationships over the years with racers that mean return horses as well. ••• What is your favorite part of run- ning the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club? I feel lucky to be in Del Mar every day. I've worked in different tracks, including the great Santa Anita tracks, but there's nothing like Del Mar. We've got a great crew, everyone's happy to be here and happy to help. I'm so lucky to have those kinds of people here. It makes my job so much easier.