PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • November 19, 2020
Scarborough Downs will hold its last live harness racing event on Nov. 28, ending 70 years of horse racing at a struggling racetrack that had its heyday in the 1970s and ’80s. Scarborough Downs, which has been suffering financial losses for nearly 15 years, had faced a tenuous future since the facility was sold in 2018 to a group of developers who have built around the track for the last two years. Its barns, which once housed 300 horses, were removed in 2016 after the U.S. EPA determined that seepage from horse manure had contaminated local groundwater. An unspecified group has begun plans to build a harness racing facility elsewhere in southern Maine.