Firm still vying for NASCAR raceway

SEATTLE – Unfazed by a tepid reception from lawmakers this spring, a Florida-based racetrack corporation said Wednesday that it still hopes to build the region’s first NASCAR speedway on the Olympic Peninsula.

“We haven’t given up,” said Grant Lynch, vice president of International Speedway Corp. The 83,000-seat track would be south of Bremerton, in Kitsap County.

Proponents and a handful of opponents argued their case before lawmakers Wednesday at a legislative hearing called by Lt. Gov. Brad Owen – a supporter of the track plan.

“Our sport will find a great home here in the Evergreen State,” predicted Lynch.

It wouldn’t be a cheap home. To help pay for the track, the company wants $166 million in sales tax credit and $13 million from a tax on admission tickets. The money would pay off construction bonds. International Speedway Corp. would cover the rest of the $345 million cost, plus any overruns.

Olympia has approved similar sports deals before. The public is, for example, picking up $374 million of the $513 million cost of Safeco Field – that’s 73 percent – through a series of taxes and a slice of the state lottery.

The situation is similar at nearby Qwest Field, where the public is paying 65 percent of the cost: $300 million out of $461 million.

In fact, as ISC Chief Financial Officer John Saunders pointed out to lawmakers, the racetrack “represents the largest private investment in a sports facility in the state’s history.”

The Kitsap County site is the speedway corporation’s second attempt at securing a Seattle-area track. Two years ago, the company pushed hard to build the track on farmland in Snohomish County against stiff resistance from local residents. High costs at that site torpedoed the plan.

Critics of the new site say it’s ludicrous to place a 950-acre racing facility drawing tens of thousands of vehicles in an area that’s accessible mainly by bridge or ferry. They also don’t want public tax dollars paying for a for-profit sports franchise.

“Why does a $2 billion company whose forecast revenues for this year alone exceed $800 million need taxpayer help?” said Ray McGovern, chairman of the Coalition for Healthy Economic Choices in Kitsap.

The group also worries about the runoff from the large grass parking areas surrounding the track.

“Go to any Wal-Mart or Home Depot and take a look at their parking lot. It’s oil-covered,” McGovern told lawmakers.

This spring, state lawmakers rebuffed the proposal, saying they didn’t want to put public money into such a project. ISC affiliate Great Western Sports spent $53,000 on at least five lobbyists in Olympia, state public disclosure records show. Yet they couldn’t find a single lawmaker willing to sponsor a bill to launch the track’s financing.

“We heard a lot of people tell us ‘You need to back off and visit with us first,’ ” said Lynch.

Message received, apparently. Wednesday’s meeting was dominated by a long list of people touting the economic benefits that NASCAR events bring. Among the supporters: Congressman Adam Smith, state officials from Kansas and Arizona, Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg and state associations representing labor, hotel owners and contractors.

“We had doubters also,” said Steve Kelly, director of commerce for the state of Kansas, where ISC opened a track in 2001. The track has brought a wave of publicity, tourists and hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending per year, he said. The Kansas speedway “has vaulted us into a point where the Kansas City region is looked upon as a destination,” he said, with retailers, a water park and even Legoland considering building at the site. Before the track, he said, the area where the track was built was a depressed region “where there was only envy.”