Randall Dee Hubbard

Early life and education, and early career

Randall Dee "R.D." Hubbard was born on June 13, 1935, in Smith Center, Kansas, where he was raised with his seven older siblings. His father, Miner Hubbard, ran the ice house in Smith Center, and at age 11 Hubbard started working as an ice delivery boy. Afterwards, he worked in wheat fields across the midwest, including the states of Texas and North Dakota. He played basketball in high school.

Though Hubbard recollects that his family had little money for education, he attended Butler County Community College, located in El Dorado, Kansas. He graduated with an associate degree.

By 1957, Hubbard was working as a teacher and basketball coach at Towanda Junior High School, located in Towanda, Kansas. He resigned after a year when his salary could not support his young family.

Safelite and AFG Industries

At age 23, Hubbard began working as a salesman for Safelite in Wichita, Kansas. A year later, in 1960, Hubbard helped his employer find a horse for his daughter, and afterwards the two men partnered on sending three young quarter horses to a show trainer. With the profit made from selling the horses Hubbard co-founded the Red Bee Ranch. When the ranch's stock was sold in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1970 it was the "highest grossing quarter horse dispersal sale" of the time, and still was as of 2010.

After a time as general manager at Service AutoGlass, in 1968 he became the president of the company's owner, Satellite Industries. He remained as president when the company was purchased by Royal Industries. During his tenure, annual sales increased from $7 million to $100 million, which positioned Safelite as the largest auto glass-replacement company in the United States.

Hubbard left Safelite in 1978, and instead purchased two small glass companies near bankruptcy. Fourco Glass of West Virginia and ASG Industries of Tennessee were merged into the new glass company AFG Industries, with Hubbard as CEO. AFG would purchase ten more glass companies from 1982 to 1986. In 1987, AFG acquired an auto-glass subsidiary of Ford Motor Company.

In the 1980s, the The Los Angeles Times wrote that "Hubbard's strategy of piecing together smaller companies and developing new products and technology has enabled Irvine[, California]-based AFG to dominate segments of the glass industry". The company grew to become the second-largest manufacturer of flat glass in the United States. With 1987 sales of $488 million, it soon ranked in the Fortune 500 and by 1988 had annual sales of $700 million.

The company had gone public in 1978, though Hubbard then took the firm private in a leveraged buyout for $1.1 billion in 1988. After operating AFG Industries for over a decade, Hubbard sold the company in 1992 to an international firm.

A book about his time with AFG was published by a Wichita State University professor in 1984, and Hubbard was also awarded the Phoenix Award in 1988, which recognizes contributions to the glass industry.

Ruidoso Downs and early tracks

To oversee his business interests and investments, early in his career Hubbard founded the company R.D. Hubbard Enterprises.

In 1980, Hubbard built Crystal Springs Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, and Frontera Farms in Sunland Park, New Mexico, both horse breeding operations.

After parimutuel gambling was legalized in Kansas in 1986, Hubbard was approached with the idea of a greyhound track by Dick Boushka. Though Hubbard had never seen a greyhound race, the Los Angeles Times wrote that Hubbard "envisioned a combined horse-dog complex, and now Kansas has a $70-million facility [named The Woodlands], the two tracks sharing a joint parking lot". According to Hubbard, "if we didn't do what we did, the greyhounds and the horses would have wound up competing against one another in the same market. It was a better idea getting the two industries to work together".

In 1988, Hubbard bought Ruidoso Downs Race Track, his first racetrack. Though the track had fallen into disrepair, within a year Hubbard and a business partner invested several million dollars into improving the track.

At Ruidoso Downs, he and his wife founded the Hubbard Museum of the American West, which as of 2011 held a 10,000-piece collection of Western and cowboy artifacts. Hubbard continued to own the majority of the Ruidoso Downs Race Track as of 2015.

In Kansas City, Kansas, Hubbard funded the construction and opening of The Woodlands racing park in 1989. Built to serve as both a greyhound track and later as a horse racing track, the venue was the first legal gambling outlet in the area since the 1930s, and in its second year attendance peaked at 1.7 million attendees. In June 1989, Hubbard sold his interests in "pari-mutuel plants" in Kansas, including the two-track Woodlands facility.

As of 1989, he was a part of a group working to buy the Los Alamitos Racetrack, located in Los Alamitos, California, for $68 million. Los Alamitos, owned by Hollywood Park, was still under its original ownership as of 1991, though by then Hubbard had purchased a percentage of the track's stock. In 1991, Hubbard withdrew plans to build a thoroughbred track near Seattle, and that year he bought a controlling interest in Multnomah Greyhound Park in Troutdale, Oregon. He would sell the Wood Village track in 1998.

Hollywood Park and casinos

In the early 1990s, Hubbard campaigned to purchase control of Hollywood Park Inc. in California. By the late 1980s, the racetrack Hollywood Park, though frequented by celebrities, was near the point of bankruptcy. Hubbard became CEO of Hollywood Park in April 1991, after having purchased a portion of the company's stock in late 1990. He was assisted in the ouster of former chairman by company shareholder Tom Gamel and sports businessman Harry Ornest. Hubbard also became chairman of the board at Hollywood Park.

He continued to keep a 60% interest in Ruidoso Downs and his ownership of the Woodlands in Kansas City. At the time, the Los Angeles Times opined that "perhaps only one other racing investor, Edward J. De Bartolo... has such multiple interests."

Hubbard owned Hollywood Park for most of the 1990s, and in 1991, $20 million was spent improving the racetrack. That year the park earned its first profit in five years, and despite rioting in nearby Los Angeles in 1992, annual profits that year increased to $5.4 million.

By 1993, the Los Angeles Times wrote that "shareholders at Hollywood Park, while not always agreeing with Hubbard's full-speed-ahead style, are enjoying substantial investment gains".

Hubbard announced that Hollywood Park would undergo a $100 million expansion into Hollywood Park Casino, which opened in the summer of 1994. Also in 1994, Hollywood Park Inc. purchased the Arizona-based Turf Paradise Race Track for $34 million in stock.

Hollywood Park Inc. suffered losses in 1995, though at the end of 1996, Hubbard announced that Hollywood Park was buying Boomtown, Inc. for $188 million. Boomtown operated and owed casinos in several cities such as Las Vegas and New Orleans.

Hubbard was named CEO of the Year by Financial World magazine in 1997, and at one point in the 1990s his net personal worth was estimated at $100 million.

Boomtown merged with the casino operator Pinnacle Entertainment in 1998. That year, Hubbard opened the first hotel-casino in California, the Radisson Crystal Park Hotel. Hollywood Park was purchased by Churchill Downs Incorporated on September 10, 1999. Churchill Downs acquired Hollywood Park-Casino in the process, which was in turn leased by Hollywood Park Inc. (later named Pinnacle Entertainment).

As of 2015, Hubbard continued to own Billy the Kid Casino on Ruidoso Downs. R.D. Hubbard Enterprises was based in Palm Desert in 2010, and Palm Desert and Ruidoso, New Mexico, as of 2013, with Hubbard continuing to serve as chairman.

Crystal Springs Farm

Hubbard bought the large breeding farm Crystal Springs Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1980. The farm has produced a number of champion stud horses and mares.

In 1998, Hubbard entered his best horse, Gentlemen, into the Classic at the Breeders' Cup, with Richard Mandella as trainer. Though Gentlemen ended up not competing because of an injury, the following year Hubbard entered Puerto Madero in the same race. Puerto Madero had won the Donn Handicap at Gulfstream Park, located in Hallandale Beach, Florida, some weeks earlier, notably beating Silver Charm. Puerto Madero progressed to the final race. By 1999 Hubbard's quarter horses and thoroughbreds had won around $15 million.

In the fall of 2007, the operations of Crystal Springs Farm moved near Tularosa, New Mexico. As of 2010, he had horses in training with trainers such as Julio Canani, Richard Mandella, and Bill Mott, and also by that time he had campaigned for twenty-five horses who had won stakes.

In 2009, the American Quarter Horse Association gave Hubbard a lifetime achievement award and inducted him into its American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame. Hubbard was a member of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association as of 2010, as well as a board member and trustee for Breeders' Cup Ltd.

R.D. and Joan Dale Hubbard Foundation

Hubbard and his wife formed the R.D. and Joan Dale Hubbard Foundation in 1986, which works to "provide improved educational opportunities for students of all ages". According to Hubbard, "we started with local scholarships in our hometown [in Kansas]; and, as we got bigger, we expanded the program to New Mexico and California".

In 2007, the foundation donated $1.5 million to Hubbard's alma mater Butler County Community College, and since its founding it has donated an average of $2 million per year to various projects.

The Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, a nonprofit educational organization, inducted Hubbard as a member in April 2014.

Shoemaker Foundation and private donations

Hubbard has formed other charity organizations such the Shoemaker Foundation. Named after jockey Willie Shoemaker, the foundation raises funds for horsemen who are ill or injured in accidents.

In the Coachella Valley, California, where they live, the Hubbards have donated funds to California State University, San Bernardino and local organizations, including the McCallum Theatre, The Living Desert Zoo & Botanical Garden and Palm Springs Art Museum. In 2013, Hubbard and his wife donated half a million to the University of New Mexico, to be used to build the R.D. and Joan Dale Hubbard Clubhouse for the baseball team.

Work through Bighorn Golf Club

In 1990, Hubbard became a founding member in Bighorn Golf Club in Palm Desert, California, with the development soon building a championship golf course.

When WCI Communities Inc. put Bighorn Golf Club up for sale in 1996, Hubbard organized a group of his neighbors to purchase the club, and in doing so became one of the new club's dozen or so owners. Hubbard continued to serve as chairman and managing general partner of Bighorn as of 2015.

Bighorn, which has hosted events including the Skins Games, the LPGA's Samsung World Championships, and the Battle at Bighorn with Tiger Woods, has been noted in the local press for its charity donations, many of which have been spearheaded by Hubbard.

Personal life

Hubbard and his wife Joan Dale married in 1971. Joan Dale Hubbard, a graduate of Emporia State University, worked early in her life as a teacher in Kansas.

They vacationed in the desert in the early 1970s and bought a home in La Quinta, California. They later built a house in the Bighorn development of[Palm Desert in 1992. As of 2010, the Hubbards maintained their home in Palm Desert with a home in Ruidoso, New Mexico.

As of 2010, Hubbard had three children and six grandchildren.