Another Sacramento State football season fumbles to a close without a national championship. I wonder how different things would be if the Hornets played at Cal Expo.
You remember Cal Expo. Home of the State Fair, sanctuary of corn dogs, Tilt-A-Whirls, 4-H lambs and horse racing. Until it wasn’t.
Cal Expo is adrift, a fairground with dwindling crowds and no future. Horse racing shut down two years ago without serious explanation.
Now the State Fair calendar moves like a midway roller coaster. Late August dates shift to July. Everyone’s ice cream melts. In 2027, the State Fair will close four weeks before Halloween.
After that, who knows? Schedules on wheels won’t save Cal Expo.
Sac State football was supposed to ride to the rescue. Or so said Cal Expo CEO Tom Martinez and Sac State President Luke Wood in 2025.
The plan was to take the State Fair grandstand, built for horse racing in 1968, scrape away the 1-mile oval dirt track and somehow rebuild the mess as a college football stadium.
Not happening.
Anyone who knows the grandstand—I raise my hand—knew the idea was ridiculous. The grandstand was designed for midcentury racing crowds, with vast concourses and 100 windows where parimutuel clerks processed $2, $5, $10 and exacta bets.
“Cal Expo’s beautiful plant is being built with an eye toward spectators, bettors and horsemen,” Bee Sports Editor Marco Smolich wrote in 1968. “A far cry from the creaky joint at the old State Fair site where on Saturdays and Labor Day bettors endangered life and limb, fighting to wager a deuce on a bangtail.”
The architect responsible for bettors, deuces and bangtails was Arthur Froehlich of Beverly Hills. He designed racetracks, not football stadiums.
His platinum portfolio stretched from Hollywood Park and Santa Anita in Southern California to Aqueduct and Belmont Park in New York.
Cal Expo was a rush job, months after Froehlich finished his $31 million masterpiece at Belmont. The State Fair grandstand was a bargain at $5 million, designed for 25,000 fans. (Belmont accommodated 100,000. Racing had a future in 1968.)
A gasbag Bee critic named Charles Johnson placed Froehlich’s Cal Expo grandstand “in the cool international style.”
Johnson wrote, “Severity is cut by the use of concrete blocks with fluttered edges, in earth color, enriching the texture of the whole. This is a chancy mixture of the lean and the rich, but it seems to work well.”
Johnson had one complaint: “The seats are made of plastic and seem a little flimsy.”
Lean, rich and flimsy. There’s a legacy for Cal Expo. Lean and rich real estate. Flimsy prospects.
Sac State doesn’t talk about Cal Expo anymore. The plan, if the word “plan” attaches to anything involving President Wood, now points toward renovating the Hornets’ erector-set stadium on campus. Estimated cost is around $300 million. Financing strategy unclear.
Foolishness over transforming Cal Expo’s grandstand into football stadium trashed the credibility of everyone involved, especially Wood and Martinez. Cal Expo still has 350 acres wasting away, with 120 acres earmarked for racehorses who run elsewhere.
I suggest a séance to contact Arthur Froehlich. He died in 1985 but must have some thoughts.
R.E. Graswich can be reached at regraswich@icloud.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
