How much money to build a Race Track?

[WingZr0]

Just sitting here watching the Home and Garden Channel and saw Holmes on Homes laying down a pretty thick strip of fresh Tarmac in a drive way. Well it got me thinking how cool would that be to build a race track out of that very sticky, gooey black stuff. So say you won the lotto for $220 million and wanted a track for your Z and friends. What do think the cost would be to build a track in any configuration you like about the same land size and course length of Fuji Speedway in 3 months time. Just the land and the track, not the grand stands or all the media stuff. I'm thinking maybe $3 million dollars. ~ EDIT ~ Ok thats kind of a low ball so I'll say $6 million.

Edited February 4, 2010 by WingZr0

[Marty Rogan]

Ask Darrell. The clubs near Denver just finshed building one last year I think.

Marty

[WingZr0]

Uh. . Can you throw a screen name at me, whos Darell?

[geezer]

If you hit the lotto, I think it would be more fun to travel the world, and run a variety of tracks and racing venues, but your the guy with the imaginary money.:laugh:

I remember following Darrel's thread on the development of High Plains Raceway. It is not only the money required, but also the bureaucratic process that can take years. Even here our local track finally succumbed to escalating real estate values and community pressure. I don't think it is an easy thing to do.

Edited February 4, 2010 by geezer

[sblake01]

Uh. . Can you throw a screen name at me, whos Darell?

Er, I believe that is the screen name....Darrel. Edited February 4, 2010 by sblake01
spelling correction

[WingZr0]

If you hit the lotto, I think it would be more fun to travel the world, and run a variety of tracks and racing venues, but your the guy with the imaginary money.:laugh: . .

LOL No doubt! I was trying to remember the name of that, didn't know he helped build it or there was a thread here. And yeah theres always a complainer about the noise.

Er, I believe that is the screen name....Darrel.

ok . I'll go read that thread now real quick . Edited February 4, 2010 by WingZr0

[sblake01]

IIRC, he's from Colorado, right?

[geezer]

http://www.highplainsraceway.com/

[five&dime]

Interesting thread. Last year I read about some really wealthy guy out West who built his own track. He took the best turns from the most famous tracks around the world and modeled his track after them. I bet that is one hell of a fun course. Wish I could remember where I read about it.

In addition, I don't know if this is true or not, but I also read that when the UK artist Jamiroquai lost his license from too many tickets in his exotics, he decided to build his own track so he could continue driving on his property. I wouldn't doubt it though as he is pretty loaded as well.

[WingZr0]

Read that High Plains Raceway thread and thats freakin Cool . So my first guess was right, about $3 million dollars. FIVE- that track your talking about by that rich guy was on Top Gear once I believe, and he was an oil tycoon. Lots of side ways action. Either that or a european guy had the same idea. Didn't realize all the paper work and legal papers you have to do.

Edited February 4, 2010 by WingZr0

[Darrel]

I just posted updates on the progress of our new track. It really is an impressive feat to get 12 individual clubs together with club members to design, build, donate their time money and experience to get this done.

It took $3.8 million to buy the land and build a 36' wide 2.55 mile road course with partial paddock, and that was at the time the gas prices were sky high.

The land 460 acres of which only 220 are being use for now was $395K, about a million cheaper than anything closer to Denver. We are a 60 minute drive from the center of Denver and 17 miles to the nearest towns. It's all interstate and us highway to get there from denver.

We were able to get free jersey barriers from the defunct denver grand prix, we just had to pay to move them. $80k. Very, very heavy and a lot of barriers. The tires were free as well, but again we had to pay for shipping for a tire plant in OK. $30K. The bad thing about the tires was that there was at least 100 different sizes. Try getting that many sizes together and have a decent looking tire wall. There was probably about 200 volunteers max to bolt together and place the tire barriers, most of those were one timers just so they can say they "helped" , it too bad because one of those groups bolted them together wrong and we had to do it all over again. I'm glad they didn't come out another day.

Read the history link on the HPR web site that gives you an idea of how we got it done and the history of our old track, second creek raceway that was near DIA.

You may think the land is flat east of denver, we have great elevation changes and the track uses them to make an exciting road circuit.

This is where the money came from to build it.

$700K as seed money form when the clubs ran our old track for 8 yrs after we bought the lease.

$250K from the 5 member clubs($50k ea. 4 single clubs and a 5th one with 8 individual clubs)

$2 million in private placement loans from individual club members loaning $50k each.

We can't forget the designer and developer and all the others that did pro bono work to get the zoning change we needed and the permitting done to allow us to use it for motorsports. That could have been up to $600k to get all that done.

Now the most impressive, we had roughly 1200 people donate any where from $25 to over $10K for a total of $850K.

Can you tell that I am still excited at what our amateur clubs made happen? It's even more exciting to actually drive on it.

[Darrel]

We had the zoning done and use permit by january of '08, then it was left to get the money raised. When we did, we broke ground Aug 15th of '08 and it was paved in about 2 months. The paving was done in one continuous pour running 3 strips around. We do have one more lift to go with polymerized material but we have to wait for more money from our paving fund.

There are 3 propose "country club" tracks in the area. As of yet they are still trying to raise money.

Genoa Motorsports park

Ring of the Rockies (Klause Wagner?)

Pikes Peak International Raceway is proposing a road course outside the oval/roval.

Edited February 4, 2010 by Darrel