Kansas City, Kan. ? The company that operates the Woodlands announced Tuesday that it will close the dog and horse track next month, after it failed to reach a deal with the Kansas Lottery for slot machines.

In a news release, Kansas Racing LLC said the track would shut down Aug. 24.

“The pari-mutuel industry has faced declining revenues for years and the Woodlands has been no exception, operating at a financial (loss) for quite some time. Kansas Racing LLC is still hopeful that it will reopen with new gaming revenue at some point in the future,” the company’s president, Howard T. Grace, said in a news release.

A sign at the entrance of Woodlands still reads “Casino coming soon,” but that plan appears uncertain.

The track had been negotiating for 800 slot machines, but Kansas Lottery Executive Director Ed Van Petten said Woodlands officials told him they didn’t see a way to make a deal work under current state law.

The statute gives 40 percent of revenues from slots to the state; 25 percent to the track; and 20 percent to local governments and various funds to help horses, dogs, smaller tracks and problem gamblers. The other 15 percent is negotiable.

Van Petten said the state was willing to give the Woodlands the other 15 percent, but the track still didn’t think it would make enough money to cover its operating costs and make a reasonable profit.

Kansas City, Kan., Mayor Joe Reardon said he was hopeful that the track would be able to reach an agreement with the Kansas Lottery in the next 60 days.

“Our citizens voted overwhelmingly to allow slot machines at The Woodlands,” Reardon said in a statement.

Maria Beck has operated Light Ridge Kennel at the Woodlands since 1996 and began working at the track as a trainer in 1993. She said she was blind-sided by the closing.

“We thought that if it happened that we would run out the year,” Beck said. “We didn’t expect this at all. I don’t know what I’m going to do. There’s really nothing that you can do. There are plenty of people who do this, and this is all that they do.”

The Woodlands was the only racetrack still in the running for slot machines under an expanded gambling law enacted in Kansas last year.

Sedgwick County voters last year rejected slots at the Wichita Greyhound Park, which subsequently closed, and Camptown Greyhound Park in Frontenac broke off negotiations with the Lottery earlier this year. That track has been closed since November 2000.