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Do any of you realize that Road Atlanta pretty much says busy all year. It's not just the Petit LeMans that keeps it going. Literally, if they only had they Petit, they would have been out of business many years ago. The business structure for racetracks in the US has improved greatly in the last 30 years. There was the gloom and doom where classic places were shut down but that was literally because the tracks sat dormant for 48 weeks per year. Thus, homes were built and the land just got too valuable. Today, these places stay busy 48 weeks per year, thus they create tax revenue along with all of those racers that need to eat and sleep.
People need to stop using the 1980 mindset. It's a PIA to tear down a racetrack plus the environmental issues that pop up (which all racetracks have) make it something nobody wants to touch.
I grew up in STL and our local track MAR was shut down in 1983 and it took about 30 years for them to finally start building on it. They even ran just the drag strip for another 20 just waiting for all of those homes to move in. Even at that, half the track is still there. Just like where I am today. Nazareth Speedway was shut down in 2004 but the only activity has been to move the stands to Watkins Glen. Other than that, it sits and is an eyesore. Why is this? Simple, lots of level farmland with no EPA issues. Why spend the money to try to demolish an old racetrack and then deal with all of the environmental surprises that lay underneath. Guess who owns the track? ISC. They bought it to shut it down and sell to a developer for $18M who was to put in a Wal Mart, 700 homes and expand the Brown Daub Dealership. None of that happened.
We all cry about the old tracks that have shut down but the reality is that we got a boatload more today. I can tell you that in 1985, we all thought all sportscar tracks were doomed. Boy, were we wrong about that prediction. Even ISC was wrong when they bought PPIR. That corridor was booming in CO with all of this real estate. So, ISC shut the track down and it sat. Finally a group bought it and opened it back up again. So that shutting the track down because of the I-25 corridor was exploding with growth back in 2005, never really panned out like ISC thought it was going to.
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