Economic impact of LMS may dictate relocation

How much power does a NASCAR track owner wield in his home market?

Ask the city fathers of Concord, N.C., and you'll begin to get an idea.

Bruton Smith, whose Speedway Motorsports Inc. owns Lowe's, Atlanta, Bristol, Las Vegas and Texas racetracks as well as Infineon Raceway in California, is currently involved in a spat with the city, just north of Charlotte, over zoning, possible improvements to the speedway and the construction of a new drag strip near Lowe's Motor Speedway.

Would he really?

Bruton Smith says he will move Lowe's Motor Speedway to a different location if his drag strip cannot be built. Would he really do it? Read both sides of the argument, then weigh in.

• Head2Head, click here
• Menzer: Smith bluffs move

There is talk of an announcement on Thursday that will go a long way toward determining if Lowe's Motor Speedway will remain in its present location or go on the road to a neighboring community, as Smith has threatened.

It all started in August, when Smith announced plans for a mega-drag strip complex on land adjacent to Lowe's Motor Speedway. SMI and city / county government had been discussing an economic package that could offer as much as $2.4 million for the construction of the strip, plus address the reported $200 million in improvements to LMS that Smith has been contemplating.

Once grading started on the unique four-lane strip, residents near the proposed site caught wind and squawked to city government, citing noise concerns that threatened the property value of their homes. The council then voted to change the zoning rules and prohibit construction.

Game on.

Smith, who built Lowe's Motor Speedway back in 1960, immediately began a full-court press by saying that he would bulldoze Lowe's to the ground and start over somewhere else in a community that appreciated SMI and all the jobs and revenue the facilities brought.

Just what does Lowe's bring to the city of Concord and Cabarrus County? Try $170 million a year, according to county officials. That's somewhere in the neighborhood of 70-75 percent of all tourism revenue the county earned in 2006.

Faced with the golden goose -- LMS generated $2.1 million in property taxes alone last year -- flying the coop, Concord officials then began to backpedal like a cornerback playing prevent defense.

Smith, meanwhile, has kept pressing his advantage. On Oct. 16, Smith said there was a "90 percent chance" that he would build another track in an 18-mile radius around Charlotte Douglas International Airport. The cost of that track is estimated to be $350 million, $150 million more than the improvements Smith has planned for the current facility.

If he did it, he said, he would level the current speedway and sell the land in chunks. Given the development of the area, which also includes Concord Mills mall, that land is extremely valuable.

Speedway Boulevard, which connects the speedway with I-85, is a boon for developers, and Rocky River Golf Club is hard by a new Embassy Suites Hotel and Conference Center just west of the track itself.

In his comments to the Charlotte Observer, Smith said he would bulldoze the turns of the current track, making it useless as a testing facility, and buy back the 52 luxury condominiums on the property.

He also said he regretted the potential impact of such a move on the businesses that had located there because of the speedway.

On Friday of last week, Concord City Council reversed its earlier zoning decision, but that doesn't mean Smith will necessarily stay put. The announcement on Thursday will likely give the answer.

Compare Smith's likely success in his quest to both improve his product by adding a drag strip and get help with needed improvements to infrastructure with the International Speedway Corp.'s failure to build a racetrack on Staten Island in New York City.

ISC, run by the France family, recently agreed to sell its 676-acre parcel of land in Staten Island for $100 million, about what it paid for the land to begin with (complete story). There were another $50 million in associated costs, as well.

In Staten Island, ISC met a hailstorm of criticism surrounding the proposed facility and its 80,000 seats from residents, and politicians there were overtly hostile to the very idea. A meeting in April of this year had to be broken up by police after things turned nasty.

The location faced serious logistical challenges, because there are only two roads onto the island, both of which are ill-equipped to handle the increased traffic. Residents also cited environmental concerns about the track, which would have been located less than two miles from downtown Manhattan.

Smith, if he chooses to make the improvements to the current facility, will have come out of the ruckus with tax incentives and possibly even a road (Speedway Boulevard) named in his honor.

Thursday's rumored announcement will tell the tale.