Offering frequent news and analysis from the majestic Evergreen State and beyond, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's unconventional perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Want a new racetrack? Pay for it yourself

NASCAR and its boosters are making a big attempt to sell legislators and the public on a proposed new racetrack for the Kitsap Peninsula - their second attempt in two years to build a racetrack in the Northwest. But there's a catch to their proposal:
The plan for a NASCAR track in Western Washington was unveiled earlier this month by officials from NASCAR's sister company, International Speedway Corp., of Daytona, Fla.

Speedway Corp.'s vision for a Northwest raceway would cost $345 million, and the company says it's willing to put up nearly half the cash and cover any cost overruns. The rest would come from state-backed bonds financed by a portion of state sales tax collections and a new levy on racetrack admissions.
The catch is public financing. The state has to pay for at least half of the raceway under their proposal. That's $172 million dollars - which is a lot of money just for one project that's going to be operated by a private, for profit entity.

The sports business apparently isn't profitable enough to afford the cost of building stadiums and raceways on its own. Or maybe it is - and the industry is just trying to take advantage of taxpayers.

We seem to have a stadium problem. It was only a few years ago that KeyArena was built in Seattle Center, and now the Sonics are clamoring for a new stadium. At the very minimum they want the state to invest more money so that they don't have to pay off their share of KeyArena.

No more Qwest Fields. No more Safeco Fields. No more KeyArenas. You want your own stadium (or, in this case, raceway)? Pay for it yourself. If you're so sure this is going to result in a huge economic payoff, then you'll be willing to take the risk and make the investment.

Besides the financing, there are other issues in this debate:
Ed Newbold, a wildlife artist who sells prints of orcas, salmon and other wildlife from a shop in Seattle's Pike Place Market, ran advertisements in both of the city's daily newspapers, asking: "How about nothing for NASCAR?"

Newbold criticizes auto racing as a male-dominated sport "that promotes risk-taking, speeding, fossil fuel waste and noise pollution." And he compares drivers unfavorably with other professional athletes, "who don't use gasoline to do the hard work."

But beyond any cultural conflicts between the Northwest and the NASCAR nation, Newbold thinks the real problem is the money.

"They're good people," he said. "But why bust the treasury for them?"
Ed Newbold is exactly right. Why should taxpayers open their wallets for a raceway? Especially if other regions haven't needed to:
[State Senator Tim] Sheldon, who thinks the track would be an economic boon, was a leading opponent of the deal to publicly pay for the Seahawks' stadium. He'd like to see Speedway Corp. pay for the entire racetrack proposal, as it has pledged to do in New York.

"One individual wrote me a letter and said, 'I don't need a racetrack. I already own a baseball stadium and a football stadium,"' Sheldon said.
If New York can get a raceway without public financing, we should be able to as well. Speedway Corp. shouldn't get a dime from the state of Washington. In fact, even if state money is not used to build the raceway, there will still be indirect costs, especially when it comes to transportation. Fortunately, the state is investing in transportation. However, there will still be questions about whether the region can support the traffic.

We're fine with a new NASCAR racetrack - so long as Speedway pays for all the construction costs and there is a transportation plan. And that plan should definitely provide convenient transportation alternatives (such as bus service) to the private automobile.

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