Published January 2005

Local NASCAR talks end;
ISC to reopen site search

SCBJ Staff

Two months after the International Speedway Corp. selected north Snohomish County as the preferred location for a regional motorsports speedway, both sides — local officials and the track developer — pulled out of negotiations for the $250 million racetrack.

For Snohomish County and Marysville, the deal fell apart because ISC would not sweeten its end of the bargain. They tried to get ISC to either pony up more than its initial $50 million offer or provide some kind of guarantee that NASCAR’s most-popular racing series, the Nextel Cup, would come to Marysville. That’s against NASCAR policy.

In a late-November letter to a top ISC official, County Executive Aaron Reardon and Marysville Mayor Dennis Kendall jointly expressed their reasons for ending negotiations:

“As public officials, our foremost obligation must be to the citizens of Snohomish County, Marysville and Washington state,” Reardon and Kendall wrote to ISC Senior Vice President Lee Combs. “The Marysville City Council has been briefed and agrees that we cannot proceed without guarantees that would shield taxpayers from any potential financial risk associated with the facility’s construction and operation.

“Unfortunately, we do not believe that taxpayer safeguards in the financing package have proceeded to our satisfaction, nor as swiftly as we had hoped.”

Reardon said the decision was strictly business, and that ISC’s proposal relied on public financial support that was simply too much. For ISC, the overall $250 million price tag was at least $100 million more than other tracks it has built in recent years — even much bigger ones, Combs said.

The $250 million price tag did not include another $85 million in transportation improvements that would help move traffic to and from the track.

Combs said his company had a good working relationship with Marysville and Snohomish County and that he had no hard feelings. The company plans to reopen its Northwest search for a racetrack site.

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