Chairman, City Council At Odds Over Proposed Drag Strip

CONCORD, N.C. — Is Speedway Motorsports, Inc. Chairman O. Bruton Smith serious, or is he just grandstanding?
Probably a little of both.
Last week after City of Concord officials got wind that Smith was making plans to build a $60 million drag strip alongside The Dirt Track @ Lowe’s Motor Speedway, it moved swiftly to prevent construction.
The Concord City Council held an emergency meeting Oct. 1 and voted unanimously to change the zoning of the property where the proposed drag strip would go, thus making it illegal for LMS to build a drag strip on the land which borders several housing developments that were built long after Lowe’s Motor Speedway opened in 1960.
Smith reacted swiftly — and loudly.

“We are either going to go away or the city of Concord will go away and leave us alone.”

— O. Bruton Smith, Chairman, Speedway Motorsports, Inc.

The next day he told the Charlotte Observer and hosts of other area media outlets that he wanted to be annexed out of the Concord city limits. Later, he went as far as to say, he would buy new land and move the entire speedway to a new property somewhere else in the Charlotte region, spending as much as $350 million in the process.
“I am deadly serious,” Smith said. “I am ready, willing and able to do that… If I found the land today, I would have our engineers on the job within a few days.”
And as a result, he sent Concord businesses scrambling in an attempt to appease both Smith and the local citizens who were concerned about the noise the drag strip may create, while at the same time putting Lowe’s Motor Speedway at the top of all local newscasts for three-straight days just one week before the UAW-GM 500.
That in itself, no doubt helped ticket sales for the fifth event in The Chase for the Nextel Cup Oct. 13.
While Concord Mayor Scott Padgett said the citizens had “legitimate concerns that need to be addressed,” Smith believes he and the speedway, which has a $169 million annual economic impact in Cabarrus County alone, have been model citizens in the Concord community.
“I feel like I have been an excellent corporate citizen in Concord,” Smith told the Charlotte Observer. “We have given more than $5 million through Speedway Children’s Charities. I have given money to the Junior (Charity) League (of Concord); they have some very nice people there. I gave a truckload of art for the old courthouse. We have done a lot of good things, and this is the thanks we get?”
“If the folks there don’t like noise, maybe one day they will not allow jets to come into the airport there, so they will lose that. If I find enough land and get permitted by the FAA, I will build an airport where I build the new track,” Smith continued.
“We are either going to go away or the city of Concord will go away and leave us alone.”
Chances are a resolution will come, the speedway will remain in Concord, and a drag strip will be added, but folks in the racing industry learned a long time ago not to underestimate Bruton Smith.