I love NASCAR but no taxpayer money for sports.
Arguing is silly.
Even if the populace votes both of them down, it only takes a phone call from Paul Allen to have both of them built — at taxpayer’s expense.
Glad I left that state.
France could pay for this out of his mad money. Greedy little twerp.
I love NASCAR, but no way taxes should pay for private sporting companies. Plus the last thing NASCAR needs is another track.
I live in the shadow of a NASCAR track, and know the place very well from a number of capacities.
ISC’s speedways are like casinos... The customers come in, and ISC tries to keep as much of their money as possible, leaving little for area merchants.
ISC bought a bunch of prime real estate for parking areas, meaning that they’ll never be $300,000 homes, full of people who will patronize local merchants year-round.
ISC does help some local non-profits with jobs during race weekends. And, they do make the speedway available for the state high school cross-country championship, as well as a huge hot rod show. They also donate tickets to charity groups for the IRL race (but in fairness, they only sell 20,000 and have 155,000 seats).
What we do have is a traffic jam from hell on race day. Either the traffic will be backed up, literally, for 24 hours after the race, or the state will need to build 4 lanes or more to the nearest Interstate.
Then again, at one time, NASCAR was a small-crowd regional series. It is possible that someday they’ll be that small again. Tracks do go bankrupt (Pikes Peak, Nazareth and Chicago recently, and a long list of famous tracks over the past 35 years).
I’d encourage anyone who wants a track in their back yard to visit me on a NASCAR weekend. AT least they’d know what they’d be getting.....
I’m torn on this issue because I would like to see the sonics stay in Seattle, and many businesses and jobs are lost by a major sports franchise leaving a city. The bike trail obsessed, liberal pandering bolsheviks that make up Seattle city politics are completely wrong in their public statements that pro-sports and these facilities don’t bring any cultural value to the city and state.
But these facilities have gotten soo expensive, its almost impossible to ever recoup your investment.
If you are a WA resident, could you tell me if the area proposed for the NASCAR track is relatively dry compared to the usual Seattle-type weather? If it is similar to Seattle, why would NASCAR want a track where they would be under a rain threat that often?
I agree with the other posters: No tax funds for NASCAR!
Kind of small for NASCAR, isn't it? Looks to be a litte bigger than half the size of the modern superspeedways, although it is in range with some of the old tracks.
What is ridiculous is the taxpayers just payed to have Key Arena remodelled 10 years ago!
And Nascar wants to race in Western Washington the land of rain when you least want it or expect it.
I say, Bye-buh to the Sonics and if Nascar wants to come out to the Northwest the should stick it in the desert near Moses Lake ~ Between Seattle and Spokane.
Basket who?
NB what?
Build it , they will come
and blow up their engines.