A report in Axios details the efforts of a group of Music City notables to demolish Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway and replace it with additional housing and a rehearsal space for musicians.
There is a render of what the space would look like with an extension of Fair Park, behind the Geodis Park soccer stadium, extending into what is currently the oldest operating NASCAR and motorsports venue in the United States.
The render, which also has a potent marketing campaign behind it, has been put together by a nonprofit called Fairground Preservation Partners. Its founders include singer-songwriter Ruby Amanfu, artist Carrie Tillis, attorney and former fair board member Kenny Byrd and music licensing executive Josh Collum.
The group receives legal council from by attorney Saul Solomon, the former Nashville Metro director of law, former school board member Will Pinkston and executive director of Americana Music Association Jed Hilly.
The group did not disclose its donors to Axios but said Nashville Soccer Club owner John Ingram is not amongst them.
The group has not met with new mayor Freddy O’Connell but has pitched their vision to his aide, Bob Mendes.
The matter of what to do with the race track has now reached a fifth mayor over the past two decades. O’Connell’s predecessor, John Cooper, supported a renovation project spearheaded by Speedway Motorsports that would have come with a 30-year lease and brought the NASCAR Cup Series back for at least a race every other year.
A 2011 referendum from Davidson County voters protects racing, the flea market and a local fair on the property.
The proposal from Fairground Preservation Partners seeks to get around that referendum by having an electric car racing track, that has a considerably smaller footprint that the current 0.596-mile oval. It also touts a quieter facility and a more sustainable ecology, while also giving Music City artists a place to practice their craft.
The emphasis on musicians, pays homage to the Fairgrounds history as the former location of FanFair, which is now CMA Fest. Amanfu says musicians are running out of places in the city to perform and live affordably.
Speedway Motorsports has begun dialogue with O’Connell and his office. In a press briefing earlier this month O’Connell stated that he came into office ‘expecting that there would be a long-term future of a speedway in some form.’ At the same time, he said there is not an ‘active state of negotiations’ over the current speedway property.
Most of the conversation, and fighting, has been over an extension of Fair Park that would override the back pit gate. Demolition began earlier this year but it was halted when legal threats resulted in an understanding that such work would be in violation of the 2011 referendum.
Prior to the O’Connell’s election, there were rallies in support of the speedway in the hopes of getting the three required readings of the agreement heard so that the deal could land on Cooper’s desk for approval before he left office.
That did not come to fruition.
That referendum is also what makes the Fairground Preservation Partners plan just as challenging as the one spearheaded by Speedway Motorsports. Any demolition or construction on the property currently requires 27 approval votes from the 40-seat Nashville Metro Council.
A law was passed in May, approved by the Tennessee General Assembly and signed by Governor Bill Lee, that would require only 21 votes to approve construction so long as the improvements would be used for “substantially the same use” as their predecessors.
That would have made it easier for the Speedway Motorsports agreement to come to fruition but the law has since been challenged with a lawsuit.
The court battle over that law’s state constitutionality continues.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.