Jockeys' Guild Moves Tack to New Offices

In a further attempt to cut ties with former Jockeys' Guild president Dr. Wayne Gertmenian and his consulting firm Matrix Capital Associates, the Guild, under its new management, moved offices this week.

Under a former contract with Gertmenian, the Guild had been paying $4,000 in rent per month for the Guild office and an adjacent Matrix office located in Monrovia, Calif. The rent for the new temporary office is $1,706 plus utilities.

Guild attorney Barry Broad called the former lease agreement "oppressive" and said it "was another profit point in the long running system by which money left the Guild.

"Among the many self-serving things that Dr. Gertmenian did is negotiate an agreement that the Jockeys' Guild would not only rent the space they occupied, but rent a separate space that Matrix occupied," Broad said. "We were paying roughly twice as much as the property was worth and was in addition paying Matrix some kind of additional fee for maintenance on top of the rent."

The new office space is located at 1740 East Huntington Drive, Suite 310 in Duarte, Calif., about two miles from the former office. It is about 2,000 square feet of office space, compared to approximately 1,800 square feet in the old office. The rental arrangement at the new office is on a short-term basis with the option to extend.

Whether or not Guild headquarters will remain in California is yet to be determined.

"Among many of the decisions the Guild will be making is where to keep the office permanently," Broad said. "I would say there have been some folks who have suggested both internally and externally the Guild consider moving back to Kentucky."

Gertmenian moved headquarters to Monrovia from downtown Lexington when he took over the Guild in 2001.