VIENNA Study of Kansas City racetrack inspires county commissioners

Negotiations won't begin with the racetrack developer until a second study is completed.
By STEPHEN SIFF
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
VIENNA -- The success of the Kansas City Speedway has encouraged Mahoning and Trumbull County commissioners that the same thing could be possible here.
"If I could blink my eyes and put the same thing here today, I would do it," said Joseph Angelo, a Trumbull County commissioner, at a press conference Tuesday after his return from the trip.
Officials are still a long way from making the 40-acre, 400-foot-tall indoor racetrack proposed for a site near the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport a reality. The next step would be a $150,000 study on how the facility could be used on nonrace days, said Reid Dulberger, chairman of the Western Reserve Port Authority.
The first study commissioned by the authority, which is run by commissioner appointees from both counties, concluded that the $300 million track could bring $100 million into the local economy annually. It also found that the facility was likely to lose millions of dollars a year unless it attracted a race on NASCAR's Winston Cup circuit.
Negotiations with the developer proposing the project, Bob Brant of Brant Motorsports in Morgantown, W.Va., would not begin until the second study is complete, Dulberger said.
"Brant is very interested in moving ahead as quickly as we can move ahead, but we have no commitment with them," he said.
Chief among unresolved issues is how much of his own money Brant would put into building the facility, and who would own it once it's complete.
Trip to Kansas City
On Monday, Angelo, Dulberger, Mahoning Commissioner Ed Reese, Tom Nolan, the airport's director of aviation, and a consultant traveled to Kansas City, Kan., to discuss the construction of a racetrack there with local officials.
It cost the port authority about $900 to sent the local delegation to Kansas, Nolan said. Angelo and Reese paid their own way.
"The whole area was really enlightened by the racetrack," Reese said. "I saw an upbeat attitude in the area. It was explained to us that it really had a downcast attitude before."
The 2-year-old Kansas Speedway was the cornerstone for an 800-acre retail, commercial and office development. Officials told them that millions of visitors a year are expected to come to the area just to visit mammoth furniture and sporting goods stores. Several hotels are also under construction.
"They wanted to be a destination first, and I think the port authority, along with the commissioners of Trumbull County and Mahoning County would like to see the same thing happen in this area," Reese said.
The Kansas racetrack employs about 75 people, while there are 1,500 to 2,000 working in the rest of the development, Angelo added.
Plans for racetrack-related development here have not been formed.
Cost
All this progress comes at a cost, however.
In Kansas City, local officials came up with $360 million from one kind of development program, which gambles that potential tax revenue from development will be sufficient to cover up-front costs, Dulberger said. And there also were state and federal grants, with support from the governor and state Legislature.
Construction of the speedway itself was largely paid for by its owner, the publicly traded International Speedway Corp. Angelo said he was told that taxpayers paid one-third of the cost.
Jeff Boerger, the Speedway president, uses different figures. He said the state and local government contributed $50 million to the $224 million track.
Demand for tickets already has prompted a 5,000-seat expansion of the 79,000-seat facility.
siff@vindy.com