Abandoned Racetracks - Dark Clouds On The Horizon

Armstrong says he and coinvestors tried to buy the land, but the price was too high to be supported by a racetrack. With wood grandstands and aging facilities, the track was already on the financial ropes. It was in desperate need of new paving, but when the cost was too great, Armstrong converted it to dirt.

"Because our lease was year-to-year, no bank would give us the money to make the improvements we needed to make," he says. "Finally, I walked away from a big part of my life."

Closures aren't limited to the size of the track, the breadth of the market, or even the location. Some, like Ontario Motor Speedway and Riverside Raceway in California, were storied facilities with historic reputations. Others are almost unknown but to the drivers and fans who mourn their loss.

Right now it is just a trickle, and the problems are more anecdotal than epidemic. But as economic and political pressures mount against speedways in urban areas, trouble could be brewing at almost every urban track.

And just as every track is different, the circumstances under which they go out of business are also unique. "The racetrack business is unlike any other in the world," says Armstrong, who has moved to Atlanta to run an NHRA-owned dragstrip. "You can have a racetrack in a good market area, but you really are working with an expensive, horribly under-used asset.

"It is like owning a McDonald's restaurant that you can run only one night a week, only six months out of the year. Oh, and there's no roof over the kitchen or dining area, either. So when it rains, you don't run it at all."

It can make operating a speedway an iffy business, at best. Two years ago, the buyers of Louisville Speedway shut down the track and moved its best dates to Kentucky Speedway, with hopes of getting their new track on the Nextel Cup schedule. The investors bought the Louisville track in 1998, just as construction was beginning on Kentucky Speedway.

The Louisville Speedway site is being redeveloped as an industrial park. Mark Simendinger, president of the company that owns both sites, told the Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper that the Louisville track, built in the 1950s, could no longer hold its own in the economy.

"It reached the point where the value of the track property reached the level where we couldn't afford to operate it as a racetrack," he told the newspaper.

In racing-rich North Carolina, Orange County Speedway in Rougemont was closed for the season while owners tried to find someone to buy the aging oval.

Many of NASCAR's stars such as Bobby Labonte, Mark Martin, and Jeff and Ward Burton have bumped their way to the checkered flag there. Rumors raced through the motorsports community early this year that Dale Earnhardt Jr. was considering buying the 3/8-mile paved oval. But the rumors were just wishful thinking.

Once among the premier short tracks in the Southeast, the track has fallen on hard times and was being offered at $1.8 million for the speedway and 118 acres.

It was first known as TriCo Speedway and was a dirt oval until 1983, when it was paved. But today, the pavement is in poor shape, the grandstands need work, and the fans have found other places to go.

The track has had three owners in the past 10 years.

"Track closures is not an epidemic, but it is a concern," says Stuart Gosswein of the SEMA Action Network, the political arm of the nation-wide Specialty Equipment Market Association.

With its roots in drag racing, SEMA works closely with the NHRA to battle laws that have an impact on dragstrips. It is more difficult to organize promoters with sanctions from NASCAR, ASA, USAR, and regional racing organizations, all running under separate rules.