Hope whoever buys this doesn't turn it into a housing edition. I always wanted to run there but schedule never worked out.
Hope whoever buys this doesn't turn it into a housing edition. I always wanted to run there but schedule never worked out.
The county commissioners there have all but guaranteed it will become a Sl(pr)ime warehouse or something besides a racetrack.
Previous thread on what led up to this:
https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/heartland-park-topeka-may-be-demolished/249740/page1/
In reply to drock25too :
It was the first track I ever ran and I enjoyed it a lot. A satisfying straight and another one with a minor bend just to test my mettle (I do not have mettle). Then a variety of curves including a big long one that gave me enough time to evaluate my strategy and adjust. It was a blast.
I will grant you that I've only ever done two, but I didn't enjoy Gingerman NEARLY as much.
Owner fighting the tax assessment and didn't pay taxes for 5 years, meanwhile NFL owners want you pay for a stadium so they can charge you to attend and they can make billions.
So its going to be sent to auction to be sold for pennies on the dollars, to some firm can take it over, turn it into warehouse, and local politicians can talk about they created jobs, yet they will never see that ridiculous ask of taxes, they want from the owner.
And we lose another great place to have fun with cars.......
I'm grateful that I got to run a LOT of laps there over the years, but sad that it's now gone, much like Riverside in California is now a huge apartment complex and mall.
Still the good news is Ozarks International is only 2.5 hours away, and the privately owned Hedge Hollow - an hour from me - might be available for club events and such, or at least a place to go watch.
The thing I liked most about Heartland - besides the incredible variety of road course races they ran there - everything from SCCA runoffs to NASCAR to Indy cars ran there - was that they also had a dirt course and the first 300 MPH 1/4 mile drag race was done there!
In reply to trigun7469 :
If you have a look at the previous thread you'll see that the taxes being asked for weren't ridiculous, but probably way more than the owner planned for back when he initially got a sweet deal on the place. But yeah it's pretty maddening to compare to the stadium situation...
In reply to trigun7469 :
And the residents on the MO side shot it down twice already. Voters are getting smart to the stadium money grab game.
Too bad my state doesn't give the voters the choice. My lovely city council just approved $100M for the equivalent of a Double A soccer team. :(
And, at one time, the governor of Kansas personally welcomed me to the facility.
It was fun and the shower facilities were amazeballs.
trigun7469 said:Owner fighting the tax assessment and didn't pay taxes for 5 years, meanwhile NFL owners want you pay for a stadium so they can charge you to attend and they can make billions.
So its going to be sent to auction to be sold for pennies on the dollars, to some firm can take it over, turn it into warehouse, and local politicians can talk about they created jobs, yet they will never see that ridiculous ask of taxes, they want from the owner.
This happened to PBIR as well.
I love that taxpayers have to be on the hook for NBA/NHL/MLB/NFL venues and then we get charged to attend because the tax dollars utilized will bring in "tourism dollars" that are also taxed but never put back into the local community.
Y'all realize that COTA was built with substantial taxpayers dollars? Technically, tax rebates, but whatever.
And pretty much every year, the owners whine about more property tax reductions, etc.
In reply to Andy Hollis :
Texas passed a bill to create a fund for attracting major events to the state, so it only paying for the F1 fee to host of $25 million annually for the 10-year duration of its F1 contract. Unlike the NFL teams it didn't pay for the stadium and pay additional money to attract the Super Bowl. The owner of COTA Mr Epstein and auto magnate Red McCombs paid the $400 million dollars to build it. Pretty much every host government pays the F1 fee.
Near the end of the article, it mentions the 3.3 million dollar tax debt.
In reply to drock25too :
Hope the county chokes on that tax debt.
Wouldn't the county be pissed if somebody bought it and turned it into... a racetrack?
You could pay the buyer 1 million dollars and they'll still be in debt buying this property.
camopaint0707 said:You could pay the buyer 1 million dollars and they'll still be in debt buying this property.
The seller (Payne) is on the hook for the back taxes, not the buyer. I don't think this is going as well as he thought it would.
trigun7469 said:In reply to Andy Hollis :
Texas passed a bill to create a fund for attracting major events to the state, so it only paying for the F1 fee to host of $25 million annually for the 10-year duration of its F1 contract. Unlike the NFL teams it didn't pay for the stadium and pay additional money to attract the Super Bowl. The owner of COTA Mr Epstein and auto magnate Red McCombs paid the $400 million dollars to build it. Pretty much every host government pays the F1 fee.
Agreed. I followed the development of that track very closely and it was private money that built it, not taxpayer money.
OMG, I can't wait for this guy to get out of town.
He extended the auction by a week, after the result was less than desired, as noted by the OP. It was scheduled to end this evening. Bids were much higher when I checked this afternoon. $3.5M for the track itself, another half million for the other 20 tracts. A little over $4M total.
Two hours to go, he cancels the auction.
Apparently he accepted an offer for it all that he's had since before the auction started a month ago. Mystery buyer, mystery price. We'll find out eventually. Probably close to or more than the value he's been protesting for years.
The kicker? He was keeping the 4 grandstands for the next six months. No idea if that is true for the private offer.
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