$200 million racetrack to speed through Aurora

AURORA - A group lead by Colorado Springs developer Bill Schuck announced plans Wednesday to build a new race track in northeast Aurora.

The $200 million race track would feature a 1-mile oval speedway, a 4-mile road course and a karting facility. It would seat between 65,000 and 100,000 fans. The proposed site sits on 1,500 acres on the TransPort property east of Peña Boulevard.

"The fan base travels from several hundred miles away to attend the event," said Schuck. "Many arrive several days early, and so this is clearly an opportunity to kick start what will ultimately be a much larger very exciting venue that will create not only jobs but significant revenues to the local jurisdictions."

The private venture hopes to break ground in 2010 and could host numerous racing events, such as stock car, open wheel, midget and road cars.

"We always like to see good projects come to the area. We look forward to seeing their project when they bring it in," Aurora Mayor Ed Tauer said.

Aurora City Councilman At-Large Ryan Frazier said the city will benefit from the project.

"It means a great deal to Aurora, but it's bigger than Aurora, this is about Colorado," Frazier said. "You're talking about an international sporting attraction and having an opportunity to have that in Colorado means that in terms of driving our economy forward, generating jobs, generating the types of revenue that will ultimately lead to a more prosperous Colorado. That's what this project potentially means."

The developers said Wednesday the decision to move forward with plans for the track was influenced by the recent passage of Senate Bill 173, the Colorado Tourism Act, which could provide the group access up to $50 million in state sales tax revenue to pay off construction bonds over a 30-year period. The bill has not yet been signed by Gov. Bill Ritter.

"There are dollars available through the state as well as federal stimulus dollars and those dollars under the Colorado Tourism Act are limited and to the extent this project will qualify," Schuck said.

TransPort also said it will ask Ritter and other government officials to help apply for federal discretionary stimulus funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colorado) released the following statement Wednesday about TransPort's project that would be located in his district:

"The national motor speedway project to be constructed by TransPort has the potential to bring thousands of new jobs and millions of dollars to Colorado at a critical time in our economic recovery efforts. In addition to construction jobs, there could be numerous economic development possibilities for the metro area and state."

Officials for the Florida-based International Speedway Corp. have said for more than two years that they would like to build a track in the metro area, but said any sort of venture would have to be a public-private partnership.

"We always caution anyone who wants to build a racetrack not to have the expectation that there will be a NASCAR event there. The schedule is very full currently. We have 38 events over 52 weeks that doesn't leave much if any room for adding a date," NASCAR Managing Director of Corporate Communications Ramsey Poston said. "NASCAR doesn't own tracks or drivers, it work with track operators to have race dates, currently there are two companies who have a majority of the dates. If there is a company that wanted to move a date, NASCAR will consider that, it will require a discussion with a company that currently has a race date."

But Poston did not rule anything out.

"We love racing in the West, there's been a lot of racing expansion in recent years," he said.

Click here to see a map of where the racetrack would be located.

This story in part from The Denver Post.