We should be thankful, I suppose, that the greyhound track is staying open until the end of the year. It’s losing money, and now that we know the end is near, those of us who enjoy the track can make at least one more visit “for old time’s sake.”

And then what?

Without federal approval of the Menominee casino at Dairyland Greyhound Park, not only will Kenosha not get the estimated 3,000 jobs that the casino will provide, but the city will also lose the existing 180 jobs that the track still supports.

The Menominee tribe is pursuing the case for a casino in court after being turned down by the federal government in the waning days of the Bush administration, but the prospects for success in court are far from certain. The wait has now become too much for Dairyland, which has been losing money for years and faces a loss estimated at $4 million this year.

The prospect of the dog track being empty and no casino on the horizon leads to the obvious question about what other kind of enterprise could use the property.

In an interview a couple weeks ago, Mayor Keith Bosman expressed a preference for a casino, but barring that, he preferred a retail use to residential or industrial uses.

The property’s visibility from I-94 means it is going to be part of Kenosha’s identity one way or the other. As people drive past, we don’t want the first words that come to mind to be “rust belt.”

Over the years, when alternatives to a casino were discussed, a water park with a hotel was probably mentioned more often than anything else as a good use for the property. That still sounds good, but the city and the property owners, would probably like to hear other ideas, too.

You could send your ideas to the mayor, because the city will have some say in what ultimately happens, or you could send them to the Voice of the People and let us all in on it.

It’s going to take some brain power or marketing power or both. Other dog tracks that have closed have a mixed record for redevelopment.

The village of Lake Delton has been the most successful at finding another use for its greyhound track, which closed in 1995. The track property is now a 60-store mall. Before the mall was developed, the track property was vacant for five or six years, said village clerk Kay MacKesey

The track in Kaukana closed in 1993. It was the first of the state’s five dog tracks to close. The track was first used for moto-cross and snowmobile races, and the main building hosted some homecoming dances and rummage sales, but it fell into disrepair. The city took it over, razed the buildings and redeveloped it. Now it is a commercial park, but it has only two tenants, the Lazy Dog Saloon and a mortgage company.

In Hudson, where there was also a casino proposal centered on the track, nothing has happened. The track has been vacant since 2001.

“The property has been used occasionally for police department and emergency medical service training,” said Dennis Darnold, community development director in Hudson. “Other than that, there’s been no use of the property.”

Darnold said the building is staffed 24 hours a day, every day, for security and property maintenance.

In Delavan, where the Geneva Lakes Greyhound Park closed in 2006 and live racing was shut down in November 2005, the property was sold to a development company based in McHenry, Ill. That company also bought an adjacent 70-acre parcel, so it has more than 200 acres facing Interstate 43. The kennels have been torn down, but the main grandstand building is still standing.

Joe Salitros, city administrator for Delavan, said a couple of developers have looked at the building, but he said “There doesn’t appear to be a practical way to redevelop a building like that.”

The property is well maintained, Salitros said. He said the city would like to see retail or office park developments on the site because of its visibility. Although Delavan is a very small city (about 9,000 people), it is similar to Kenosha in being between Milwaukee and Chicago on an Interstate Highway.

If Kenosha has to find another use for a greyhound park, it won’t be blazing a new trail, but it’s a trail with few success stories. The happiest ending so far involves five years or more of nothing, followed by development of a shopping mall.

That casino option looks better every day.

Steve Lund is editorial page editor of the Kenosha News. His column appears on Thursdays.