Ocala - where preserving the past whilst developing for the future is a tricky proposition

By Bill Heller

In Ocala, the seat of Marion County in central Florida known as “Horse Capital of the World”—preserving the past while developing for the future—is a tricky proposition. There are land mines everywhere.

What seemed like a gigantic victory for preservation—the sale of part of a historic Thoroughbred farm to a horsewoman who has continued using the track and barns there—would have been overshadowed by the loss of an historic cemetery on another part of the farm. The 17 graves there included one of racing’s greatest champions, Dr. Fager, and the champion mare Ta Wee. An intervention by Thoroughbred owner, breeder and an admitted “history guy,” Arthur Roy, with considerable help from Tammy Gantt, the associate vice-president of the Florida Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association, saved the site. “There are champions buried there,” Roy said. “That was a no-brainer.”

If a graveyard with Dr. Fager had been replaced by a housing development, wouldn’t that have been game over? 

Development 1, Thoroughbred history 0. Thankfully, it’s not.

Left uncertain is the fate of the house of Hall of Fame Trainer John Nerud, who trained Dr. Fager and Ta Wee on that very same farm when it was Tartan Farm. If that part of the property isn’t sold to a sympathetic buyer, and perhaps converted to a bed and breakfast, it will be lost—another relic bulldozed for progress.

This is Ocala and Marion County’s dilemma.

The sparkling, enormous year-old World Equestrian Center has brought all breeds of horses and global attention to both the city and county, but Thoroughbreds are their lifeblood with a rich history—one its owners, breeders and leaders are intent on preserving and celebrating.

The 193,000-acre farmland preservation area, established in 2005, and Horse Farms Forever, an association formed in 2018, is dedicated to preserving that area, to restrict development. Accordingly, not everyone is selling their farm to profit from Ocala’s meteoric transition from a sleepy village to a bustling city. Those farms range from Charlotte Weber’s massive 4,500-acre Live Oak to Lynne Boutte’s modest 35-acre Eagle View Farm. 

Gail Rice

Gail Rice breeds one or two mares every year at her daughter’s 18-acre farm. Rice bred 2021 Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit, and she is still recovering from the horse’s shocking death last year from a heart attack. “It’s so sad,” she said. “It hit me pretty hard.” Yet she remains passionate about preserving Thoroughbred farms. “This is our land,” she said. “This is what our horses need. We don’t need more houses.”

It takes a community to save the past.

Weber, who won the 2021 Acorn Preservation Award from Horse Farms Forever for “an individual who has made a significant contribution to the preservation of horse farms in Marion County,” knows what the alternative is: “Once you give it away, you never get it back.’”

One trip is all it takes to fall in love with Ocala and Marion County and their green splendor. A horse grazing in front of a circle of trees, perfectly happy in a natural habitat. Other horses run across expansive paddocks. Green everywhere. 

“Do you want to see green grass looking out your window or dust and bricks?” Weber asked. “Does it matter if horses walk on grass or walk on concrete? I like green grass. I like trees.”

In Marion County, the grass beneath horses is rich with limestone, providing much-needed calcium—an important mineral helping horses’ bone growth, maintenance and muscle function. Add in spring-fed water, warm winter weather, and it’s easy to see why horsemen flocked to central Florida to breed and train their horses. 

Carl Rose opened the first Thoroughbred farm in the county in 1939. Hundreds and hundreds have followed, helping Ocala to earn that moniker as Horse Capital of the World. When the phrase was first used, citizens in Lexington, Kentucky, protested. But the facts were clear that Marion County’s horse population—now 80,000 including more than 37,000 Thoroughbreds—is annually the largest in the country. That title for Ocala and Marion County was read into the Congressional Record in 1999, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture okayed its use in promotions using that label. And it’s true. According to the Florida Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association, there are more than 1,100 Thoroughbred farms and training centers in the county.

And Ocala and Marion County’s population are sky-rocketing. Ocala’s was 13,588 in 1960, 22,583 in 1970, 37,170 in 1980, 42,045 in 1990, 45,943 in 2000, 56,585 in 2010 and 61,810 last year. Marion County’s population jumped from 331,340 in 2010 to 375,908 in 2020.

Charlotte Weber has owned and managed the 4500 acre Live Oak Stud for over 50 years

“I got here in 1968; it’s just not the same place,” Weber said. “It just exploded. It frightens me. Every time I pick up the newspaper, 10,000 homes here, 10,000 at another place. It’s not a rural community anymore. I’m not opposed to change, but I don’t think it’s been well thought out. I support Horse Farms Forever, but I think that it wasn’t formed soon enough.”

Her friend and former neighbor, Wanda Hooper Quigley, who ran Hooper Farm with her husband Fred from 1970 through 2000, agreed. Asked if Ocala has changed, she said, “Oh my God; it’s overwhelming. I wish the forefathers had paid attention to development. I wish everything hadn’t been built.”

Lynne Boutte experienced culture shock when she moved from Long Island, where she’d been working at Belmont Park, to Ocala in 1980. “They used to call it ‘Slow Cala,’” she said. “There was nothing in Ocala. Three traffic lights. I was living in a room on a farm. I picked up a phone, and it was a party line. There were three TV stations, and they all went off at 10 p.m. I walked everywhere. I miss ‘Slow Cala’ and the camaraderie back then. Everybody was for everybody. There were so many moms and pops in the ‘80s and the ‘90s. The moms and pops can’t afford it anymore.”

George Isaacs, the general manager of Bridlewood farm, moved to Ocala in 1989

George Isaacs, the general manager of John and Linda Malone’s Bridlewood Farm, moved to Ocala in 1989. He then worked for Allen Paulsen, returning to Ocala in 1996 for the Malones, the largest landowners in the United States. “When I moved to Ocala in 1989, it was very, very rural and extremely agriculturally focused,” he said. “There were large farms including Mockingbird, Tartan Farm, Hooper Farm—a who’s who of some of the top owners and breeders. They enjoyed racing their own horses. They bred mares to their own stallions. They had training operations on their farm. That was racing as it is meant to be. I don’t know if we're ever going to see that again.”

Isaacs is charged with making sure they are remembered. He is the chairman of a Florida Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association Committee to install a Thoroughbred Walk of Fame in downtown Ocala. Two of the dozen horses to be honored are Dr. Fager and Ta Wee. The others are Needles, Florida’s first Kentucky Derby winner in 1956, Carry Back, Susan’s Girl, Desert Vixen, Foolish Pleasure, 1978 Triple Crown Champion Affirmed, Precisionist, Holy Bull, Skip Away and Silver Charm. “We started with the ones who are obvious,” Isaacs said. “Covid has obviously slowed down a lot of things. It’s probably going to be a little while.” 

What will Ocala be like in a little while? “We understand the passion of people who feel that there should be no growth, but that’s not realistic,” said Lonny Powell, the CEO of the Florida Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association. “Thank God, we have the preservation act. You can’t let history be forgotten. I’m not in this game for the short play. I’m a lifer. To me, I wouldn't have done my job if we didn’t protect the Thoroughbred industry.”

Thoroughbreds touch so many lives in Ocala now: the Ocala Breeders Sales, hundreds of training centers, the Florida Horse Park, horse shows, farm tours, horse retirement farms, the Florida Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association’s Museum and Gallery, and a brand-new after-care facility. On January 10th, the New Vocations Racehorse Adoption Program announced it has opened a satellite facility in Anthony, less than eight miles north of Ocala. 

Visitors to Ocala have a huge choice in lodging in Ocala, from the magnificent hotel rivalling the Waldorf Astoria at the World Equestrian Center to the quaint Equus Inn, where rooms feature walls of black and white horse photos.

More and more visitors are going to be coming.

To preserve at least part of the land in 2005, the Marion County Commission created the Marion County Farmland Preservation Area, protecting nearly 200,000 acres, to “provide a buffer for farmland against increasing growth” and “serve as a major recharge area which strains rainwater that feeds into both Rainbow and Silver Springs.”

Horse Farms Forever was created in 2018 after the Florida Department of Transportation announced a plan to put a toll road through the heart of Marion County horse country. In an article in the January 2022 issue of the Blood-Horse, Isaacs, a board member of Horse Farms Forever, said, “I have never witnessed in all my years here a single issue that drew the entire community together so quickly to eliminate a potentially devastating threat that would have destroyed the beauty and economic value of many of our farms.”

For the last three-plus years, Horse Farms Forever has partnered with the Alachua Conservation Trust, which contributed a $20,000 grant to implement conservation easements and permanently protect farmland and provide environmental benefits by maintaining a wildlife habitat and protecting water quality that would be significantly impacted by heavy development. 

The cause has been championed by Bridlewood Farm’s owners John and Leslie Malone, who was presented the 2021 Robert N. Clay Conservation Award. The Malones, who own more than two million acres in the country, purchased Bridlewood Farm in 2013 for $14 million. The farm’s 800 acres have grown to 2,200. “Anytime Mr. Malone buys a property he really likes, when land contiguous to it becomes available, he likes to buy it,” Isaacs told Blood-Horse. “Mr. Malone is a conservationist who wants to preserve and protect land for future generations. He’s a capitalist at heart who believes in owning things that are sustainable. He’s not a developer. He has never sold an acre of the land he’s bought.”

Others have. Others will.  

Is it ironic or cruel that a development project in Ocala which replaced the iconic Bonnie Heath Farm, the home of Needles, is called the Paddock Mall? Opened in 1980, the enclosed shopping area was anchored by J.C. Penney, Macy’s and Belk.

Other nearby farms and farmland are now retail development and houses. 

Then there is Winding Oaks, which encompasses both Tartan Farm and Harry Mangurian Jr.’s Mockingbird Farm.

In November, 1960, owner William McKnight purchased the Bonnie Heath Farm and its 320 acres. McKnight made millions—thanks to the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co., 3M, which made Scotch Tape and Post-It Notes household necessities. 3M’s red plaid symbol became the colors of McKnight’s silks when he started Tartan Farm. A year earlier, he had the good fortune of hiring John Nerud. A string of champions followed, none more spectacular than Dr. Fager, who won four championships (Handicap, Grass, Sprint and Horse of Year) in 1968 and set the still-standing dirt-mile record of 1:32 1/5 while carrying 134 pounds at Washington Park. He won 18 of his 22 starts with two seconds and one third, earning more than $1 million. Ta Wee, Intentionally, Aspidistra, Codex and Dark Mirage joined Dr. Fager in the Tartan cemetery. 

In 1970, Harry Mangurian Jr.  purchased Tartan Farm, renamed it Mockingbird Farm and raced such stars as Valid Appeal, also buried at the cemetery.

Mangurian Farm had grown to 1,000 acres when he sold it to Eugene Melnyk in 2001, who renamed the farm Winding Oaks. At the time, Melnyk said, “We have gotten letters from people in the community saying how grateful they are for us keeping this a farm and not selling it for commercial development. I’m committed, as long as I’m around in the horse business, to keep it as a working farm.”

He and his wife Laura generated enormous success in racing, at one time owning nearly 500 horses, including more than 160 broodmares. They campaigned 2004 Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner Speightstown and graded stakes winners Graeme Hall, Harmony Lodge, Strong Hope and Host.

In 2014, Melnyk decided to get out of the horse business. He wanted at least part of his property to continue as a horse farm, and in December 2019, he sold 178 acres to Becky Thomas, a native of Florida who had enjoyed considerable success in New York State, for a reported $6.25 million. She added 46 acres the following year and is thrilled to be running her stable, Sequel at Winding Oaks, on the track Melnyk rebuilt there: a one-mile dirt oval with an interior 7/8ths turf course. “It’s unlike any track in Marion County,” she told Showcaseocala.com. “You could run a race meet there. Mr. Melnyk put in a lot of money to build it right.”

Melnyk intended to develop the rest of the property under his company Cradle Holdings. The plan calls for 2,068 single-family homes and 1,080 multi-family units and commercial development.

Arthur Roy heard about it in September 2020. “They notified all the abutters,” he said. “We happen to live 500 feet from Winding Oaks Farm. He had already sold the training center, and the rest of the farm is going to be houses.”

In a Zoom meeting, Roy, who happens to be on the board of the Winthrop Maine Historical Society, raised his hand, then said, “I'm not opposed to development, but I mentioned there’s a horse cemetery there with several champions including Dr. Fager and Ta Wee. They said they’d heard there were a few. Then they said, `Let’s talk.’”

Roy described the cemetery: “There were 17 graves in a horseshoe pattern. It’s like a big circle of land, and behind that, a gazebo. It’s a beautiful location. It’s the highest peak of the farm. I sent a letter.”

Melnyk stepped up and did the right thing. “He said they will keep it,” Roy said. “They will add parking spots. The FTBOA will work on the signage about the importance of the location. That happened within a couple of months.”

Case closed. Almost.

Nerud’s house, 100 yards from the cemetery, was not spared. “They were going to demolish it,” Roy said. “Last April, we had a meeting, and what they agreed to do was to make that area part of an estate, and instead of tearing down the house, try to sell it. I asked for the price, but they said it’s not for sale.”

Talk about mixed signals.

John Nerud

“So far, I’ve been very happy with the developers,” Roy said. “We preserved the cemetery. We’re trying to save the house. I want to preserve it because of one guy, John Nerud. He was one of a group of gentlemen that were important in bringing Thoroughbred training and breeding into Florida. I’m from New England. I get excited if I see a sign saying, `George Washington slept here.’ He started the Breeders’ Cup. He trained champions. You have to try to save it for future generations.”

Roy thinks Nerud’s house could be converted into a bed and breakfast. He’s cautiously optimistic the house will be saved. But even if it is, he has this gnawing question: “Being a horseman, an owner and a breeder, I’m wondering how many other places have been demolished in Ocala because of development.”

Lynne Boutte knows one way to slow development: “My farm’s in a very unique area up here. It’s not for sale.”

Gail Rice put it this way: “It’s about money and money talks; but what’s important is peaceful living and having this land to raise our horses. Without green, what do you have?”