NASCAR Spurns Lewis County: County Also Faces Strong Competition for Horse Center, Gregoire Says
By Adam Wilson, The Olympian, Olympia, Wash.
Feb. 20–Gov. Chris Gregoire said she suggested building a NASCAR racetrack in Lewis County to officials from the stock car racing organization but they were not interested.
In a news conference Monday, Gregoire also said another proposal for Lewis County, a rodeo arena near the site of a TransAlta Corp. mine that closed in December, is suffering from competition elsewhere in the state.
The governor said legislators, mayors and county commissioners are not interested in a publicly subsidized, $368-million NASCAR racetrack in Kitsap County.
“I said to the NASCAR people, ‘Why don’t you take a look at Lewis County?’ Lewis County has got land to dedicate — the mine that was closed down. The excavation, obviously, is already there. And they need economic development and I think their legislators would embrace the idea,” Gregoire added. “They said it doesn’t meet their criteria.”
A location near Bremerton remains the preferred site for the racetrack, although proposed legislation would allow it to be built elsewhere, said Grant Lynch, vice president of Great Western Sports. The company is a subsidiary of the corporation backing a racetrack.
“Just like with the stick and ball sports, if you get too far away from a major city, some of your economic model starts disintegrating,” Lynch said. “If you get too far south, people start staying in Portland and that disrupts our economic model.”
That fits with studies done a few years ago, said Sen. Dan Swecker, R-Rochester, whose district includes Lewis County.
“Lewis County is one of the first counties they considered, and then they got away from us, because we were too far from all the hotels they needed to back the event. Since then, it’s kind of gravitated north,” he said.
Swecker said he felt the chances of winning state financing for a different project in the county, a proposed $55 million to $80 million equestrian center, are still “excellent.”
Gregoire said the field is becoming crowded for such a facility.
“I now have three proposals. One in Kittitas County, one in Lewis County, and one in Enumclaw and King County,” she said.
There is capacity in the state to support a major arena, Gregiore said. “But we can’t afford three, and if we keep the conflict going between three, the chances are we end up with nothing.”
However, Swecker said the Lewis County proposal is more advanced than any competitors.
“Lewis County’s got the site and the builder, and the whole bit,” Swecker said.
He said the greatest threat to the rodeo center is the possibility of being lumped together in legislators’ minds with the larger stock car track or a request for a professional basketball arena near Seattle.
“This is economic development in a rural county,” he said.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Olympian, Olympia, Wash.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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