Disrepair, Skeptics Greet New Owners at Equestrian Center

In the three months since a Burbank development firm took over the financially troubled Los Angeles Equestrian Center, work crews have painted and repaired peeling fences, pulled acres of weeds, planted dozens of rows of flowers and towed away abandoned cars rusting behind stables.

And although regular patrons of the center say Del Rey Properties has rescued the 72-acre facility from disrepair, many remain wary of the future. “Eight years we’ve been here and everyone has promised everything, and none of it has ever come through,” said one horse trainer.

It is that type of skepticism that owners Gregory Daggett and Timothy Behunin are finding difficult to overcome as they attempt to make profitable an operation that has lost money since it opened in 1982. The two Burbank residents bought the center in February from the insolvent Gibraltar Savings for $3.6 million. In May, they took control of the facility, which is on city-owned land in the northeastern corner of Griffith Park.

Since then, the new management has worked to revitalize the deteriorating center, which fell into disrepair during the caretaker ownership of Gibraltar. A 10-man crew has worked seven days a week just pulling weeds. Dozens of dumpsters have been filled with trash and hauled away. Slippery concrete wash racks have been improved so horses do not fall as they are washed. Transients sleeping in stalls have been evicted.

“We feel good about the change,” said Shirley Andrews, a city administrator who oversees the center. “For someone to take over an operation that has been deteriorating is very hard.”

General Manager Kenneth Mowry declined to discuss when Del Rey expects to turn a profit on the center.

Many patrons acknowledged that Daggett and Behunin face an uphill fight in turning the center around. Some protective horse owners said they were unsatisfied with Del Rey’s operation of the center, but most reserved judgment. Many said they feel as though they have been in limbo since Gibraltar took over in 1988, when it foreclosed on the facility’s previous owner.

“I think everyone is a little nervous,” said Beverly Engleberg, who boards a horse at the center. “Everybody is kind of watching and waiting.”

They are watching for changes in programs that might make the center cheaper to run, but would damage its reputation as one of the finest equestrian facilities in the United States. Even in its dilapidated condition, it was acknowledged to be among the best riding centers, and it is home to several world-class horse trainers. Some expressed concern that Del Rey would expand the services of the center and neglect the basic care of the 645 horses that board there.

“We don’t want restaurants and condos and swimming pools and tennis courts,” one trainer said. “We just want a place that works.”

Daggett said that’s what he wants too. He said programs at the center will remain intact and expansions will be made only if they can be shown to be cost-effective. “Everything has got to be a stand-alone deal,” he said.

The purchase of the center was primarily a business decision, but Daggett said there was a certain amount of sentimentality involved as well. Horse riders since they were children, Daggett and Behunin spent many weekends of their youth riding their horses on the hills overlooking the open fields where the center now stands.

“Everybody is a little bit cowboy at heart,” said Daggett, who has run smaller stables nearby for several years. “But this was a business move. We hope to make money in it.”

Mowry said the owners believe they can succeed where others have failed largely because their debt service is considerably smaller than that of previous owners. Andrews said the $3.6 million Del Rey paid for the center is little more than a quarter of the approximately $12 million Gibraltar owed on the facility.

In addition, Mowry said, careful management has helped stem the flow of money. A 100-yard chain-link fence, for instance, has been rented since 1982 for $74 a month. Mowry said the fence could have been bought several times over with the rent money. It will be taken down and replaced with a new fence--this one owned by the center. Andrews said electrical boxes around the facility have been padlocked to prevent the surreptitious use of electricity.

“The big story is the little things,” Mowry said. “It’s the small details.”

But some boarders and trainers said such cost-consciousness on the part of Del Rey has been reflected in the care of their horses. One woman complained that she could not get extra wood shavings used for padding for her horse’s stall. Another said her horse’s stall was not cleaned regularly. Others were anxious about the center’s decision to feed horses alfalfa cubes, instead of loose hay. Several horses died at the equestrian center recently as a result of eating cubes contaminated with animal parts.

“They ride horses, but they are not horsemen,” one boarder, who asked not to be named, said of the center’s operators.

Mowry said that stalls are cleaned twice a day and that horses whose owners do not want them eating cubes are fed loose hay.

Daggett said that it is understandable that many people are apprehensive about new management at the center and added that it might take time for longtime boarders to become accustomed to new ways.

“All I can ask people is to judge us by what we do, not by what’s been done in the past,” he said.