The owner of Hollywood Park intends to close and begin demolishing the iconic Inglewood track by Aug. 1 so it can move ahead with an ambitious $2.1 billion mixed-use redevelopment.

The decision means that Stockbridge Real Estate Funds, a San Mateo based investment fund, was serious when it threatened earlier this year to halt racing at the track if state voters allowed Indian casinos to install more slot machines.

Hollywood Park and other race tracks statewide have complained that Indian casinos – the only legal operators of slots in the state – have lured away gamblers. They unsuccessfully sought to defeat compacts on the Feb. 5 ballot that allowed Indian tribes to install 17,000 more slot machines.

Still, the massive mixed-use development is no sure thing, especially given the state of the commercial real estate market, which has stymied big projects in Los Angeles and elsewhere. Stockbridge, however, is betting that the market will have recovered by the time major portions of its project are ready to open.

“When you do projects on this scale they take 10, 15 years,” said Chris Meany, a partner at Wilson Meany Sullivan, a development firm handling the project for Stockbridge.

In interviews late last week, Meany and other representatives of the company discussed details of the massive development that have not been widely reported.

Plans call for the project to be completed in three phases, beginning with the construction of streets, sewer lines and sidewalks. Also included in the first phase are 620,000 square feet of retail space and the renovation of the park’s 120,000-square-foot card club, which is not slated for demolition.

The first phase is supposed to be completed within 24 months, once demolition of the track and surrounding structures is finished on the 238-acre site. Eventually, Stockbridge wants to build 2,995 new dwellings – mostly condominiums and townhomes priced from $350,000 to $600,000 – as well as department stores, 75,000 square feet of office space and an expansive park system featuring a lake. The homes are expected to go on sale in three to four years.

The company has enough capital on hand to begin work in August, Meany said, and is confident of acquiring any necessary funding later, though he and other company executives declined to discuss financing in detail.

Stockbridge is already in the process of knocking down the other track it owns – the 83-acre Bay Meadows Race Track in San Mateo, which was closed Aug. 17. That development is slated to have 1,200 homes, 800,000 square feet of office space and 92,000 square feet of retail space. Stockbridge wants to complete it by 2011.

Still, the developers face a tough market. The $3 billion Grand Avenue redevelopment in downtown Los Angeles, for example, has failed to secure a construction loan, even though developer Related Cos. of New York is respected nationally.

“Certainly financing is a challenge for any developer today,” said Mark Tarczynski, senior vice president of urban development at CB Richard Ellis Group Inc., the large Los Angeles commercial real estate services firm. “There are projects all over going in search of construction loans.”

Los Angeles mall developer Rick Caruso, on the other hand, last week won approval to transform the aging Miramar Hotel, in Santa Barbara County’s Montecito, into a luxury seaside hotel after many delays. Caruso said he does not expect the economy and credit crunch to slow the project, with construction starting in 2010.