At racetracks, another kind of recycling is all the rage (cont'd)

Those things can come from anywhere -- a high-school football stadium that's shutting down, another racetrack, or even from a speedway's own backyard. When Las Vegas Motor Speedway repaved and reconfigured its racing surface in 2006, the old asphalt was crushed, recycled, and used to pave dirt parking lots, a move that helped the track reduce the amount of blowing dust. Parts of older grandstands that were torn down to make way for the Earnhardt and Petty terraces were placed throughout the property as seating areas.

North Carolina Speedway may be gone, but parts of The Rock live on.

Some parts find a second life outside the racetrack. When Atlanta tore down its old backstretch grandstand after it was mangled by the tornado, Sprint Cup car owner Bill Davis asked if he could take some of the bench seating and use it at his cattle company in Concord, Ark. The track donated the old bleachers, which Davis used as seating areas inside his "Cow Palace" sales and events center.

But most pieces of old racetracks find more conventional uses. After ISC shut down the track in Nazareth, Pa., in 2004, parts of its grandstand were shipped off to Michigan, Watkins Glen, and Darlington, three tracks that also operate under the ISC umbrella. About 30 percent of the 2-year-old Brasington grandstand at Darlington, track president Chris Browning estimates, was constructed with metal and aluminum pieces from the old Nazareth structure.

"A lot of the treads and risers, the aluminum pieces that you stand on and the steps you walk up in the actual grandstand, those things came form Nazareth. Some of the steel support structures came from Nazareth," Browning said.

"[Recycling parts of old tracks] has probably been done a lot more than a lot of folks might realize, especially when steel prices are as high as they are now, or were when we built Brasington," he added. "Absolutely, you have to look at things like that. If you've got something sitting on the ground that you're not using that you can apply, it makes good business sense to do that."

Darlington isn't alone. The grandstands at the new drag strip being built at Lowe's Motor Speedway came from the former North Carolina Speedway, which SMI owned briefly before Andy Hillenburg bought it at auction. Hillenburg, who will host an ARCA event at the track in May, didn't need the monstrous 40,000-seat structure that loomed over the track's backstretch. So SMI had Southern Bleacher Co. of Graham, Texas -- which had originally installed the edifice -- take it apart. Engineers wrapped and numbered each piece, trucked them to Charlotte, and began placing them back together again.

"They're really big Erector sets," said Wes Harris, SMI's vice president for operations and development. "You just unbolt them and put them back together again. They're really simple setups. About the worst thing that can happen is, you might bend a piece of something taking it down, craning it and trucking it to another site. That's about the only thing that can happen, though."

Wilks believes the recycling habit at SMI was born of necessity, in the days before the company went public, when the lack of ready cash forced founder Bruton Smith and president H.A. "Humpy" Wheeler to get creative when the need for renovation arose. Now, it's second-nature.

"Before Speedway Motorsports went public, Bruton and Humpy didn't have any access to capital. They were really strapped for cash," Wilks said. "So it made sense to go to an auction, buy a piece of equipment, and reuse it at the speedway. That has, over time, become part of our history. Now, access to capital is not a problem anymore, but in the best interests of our stockholders, we are charged with using assets the best that we can. It just makes sense to do this."

Why not use all new materials? After all, when the NBA's Charlotte Bobcats built the downtown arena that bears their name, they didn't slap an orange coat of paint on the old coliseum seats. But in most other professional sports, each facility is independently owned. In NASCAR, SMI and ISC combine to own all but three of the 22 tracks the Sprint Cup tour visits, allowing for a sharing of resources. And Gurtis believes that a fan doesn't necessarily worry about where a structure or an amenity comes from, as long as it improves the experience.

"Our focus is always on providing the fans with a good baseline experience," Gurtis said. "I'm not sure if somebody recognizes if a hand-washing station, if it's brand spanking new or recycled from another venue. I think they appreciate the opportunity to have a new hand-washing station, which is sometimes an upgrade from a Port-o-let. As we make improvements at our facilities, I believe our guests are better served regardless of where the asset came from."

Just like those 22,000 teal chair-backed seats where concrete bleachers used to be. "As long as you're not sacrificing quality," Wilks said, "it makes sense to do it that way."