Exit off of Highway 169 in Shakopee and hang a left onto 12th Avenue. In moments, you will see everything that the Canterbury Park area has become within the past 10 years.
There’s a modern office building, a barbecue restaurant, a brew pub and the Triple Crown Residences among other developments. A few hundred yards away, the finishing touches are being placed on an amphitheater with the capacity to hold 19,000 fans that will offer a full entertainment schedule in 2026.
“Chris Stapleton is touring and doing a number of amphitheaters,” said Randy Sampson, president and chief executive of Canterbury Park. “I’m almost sure that if this was open this year he would have done two nights here, packed each night.”
Let’s not forget about the track, which was the centerpiece of the 390-acre site when the Sampson family purchased the land in 1994 and pledged to keep horse racing alive in Minnesota.
“There’s always concerns that, ‘they are developing the land, are they going to get rid of racing?’ ” Sampson said. “Our answer is that we wouldn’t have spent $15 million putting in new barns and dorms.”
If horse racing ceases at Canterbury Park, it won’t be because of Sampson, who has toiled in the industry for decades. It will be because of 201 state legislators who can’t agree on a gambling bill. They are forgetting about the track.
Live racing returns to Canterbury Park at 5 p.m. Saturday with the start of a 51-day horse racing season. That is down from a 54-race season in 2024 and will be the shortest season the track has had under Sampson’s guidance.
The season is down to 51 days in order to provide the largest purses possible. Better purses attract better horse owners. Owners who breed, buy, train and race horses want the best return on their investment. That means heading out of the state to other tracks in pursuit of larger prizes if that is required.
English (US) ·