The agreement between the Nashville Fair Board of Commissioners and Speedway Motorsports to bring NASCAR back to Fairgrounds Speedway remains in limbo until a new mayor takes office early next month.
Terms were agreed upon by both parties but it requires three readings over the course of several fair board meetings before it can be passed to the sports authority and city council for additional votes. The mayor would then have the option to sign the agreement into ratification.
John Cooper, the current mayor supportive of the agreement, did not seek reelection and leaves the final decision to his successor.
There is a runoff election scheduled for Thursday between Freddie O’Connell and Alice Rolli. An Axios report earlier in the summer detailed where both candidates stand on the current proposal:
Freddie O’Connell
“As with any deal presented to me, I will review it carefully, but I will say this: as I review a budget that doesn’t do as much as it should for public employees — including first responders — or transit, accepting another offer from the CVC and state for a tourism-focused endeavor at a local public facility is not my priority.”
Alice Rolli
“In 2011 more than 70% of Nashville voters supported a charter amendment to protect racing at our fairgrounds. While the will of the voters may be an inconvenient truth for many developers in our city, their voices matter to me. The Bristol Motor Speedway proposal appears to deliver on the promise of improving safety, lowering noise, and reducing the long term financial obligation of the city — and for these reasons, I support it.”
Axios
In the meanwhile, the fair board has continued its work to determine what would happen to the current leaseholder, Track Enterprises president Bob Sargent, should an agreement with Speedway Motorsports come to fruition.
First, there is already a provision in the agreement with Track Enterprises that will immediately transfer the lease to Speedway Motorsports should that deal reach approval. That was detailed on Tuesday by madam chair Dr. Sheri Weiner.
“We already kind of put that in place and I know that there’s already a relationship and a working relationship between Track Enterprises and (Speedway Motorsports),” Weiner said.”So as far as that transition, we’ve already discussed that and built a termination into this agreement in anticipation of if (Speedway Motorsports) gets approved.”
Read more: Nashville fair board to fine Speedway leaseholder for noise violations
Speedway Motorsports lawyer Matthew Kuhn says his group would be open to working with Track Enterprises and Bob Sargent.
“I think so,” Kuhn said, when asked by the board. “We have a great working relationship with Bob and we think he does a great job.”
An agreement could be fashioned in a way where Track Enterprises would continue to manage the monthly, local and regional racing schedule while Speedway Motorsports oversees the NASCAR component.
Meanwhile, Kuhn says Speedway Motorsports does not intend for the $100 million renovation project to disrupt the monthly racing schedule at the downtown short track.
“It’s really up in the air and it depends on a lot of factors like when we get approval and what time of year it is,” Kuhn said. “We’ve made commitments that we’re going to do everything in our power to make sure that we continually hold races and phase the redevelopment accordingly so that we can do that.
“But it’s really, we’ve been saying 18 months to 24 months, that’s what my construction people tell me. So that’s kind of what I’ve been working off of.”
In the current agreement, Speedway Motorsports has agreed to cover the $6 million in design costs, $6 million in pre-development expenses and all improvement cost overruns. The State of Tennessee is providing a $17 million grant while the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corporation would pay $17 million for the use of the speedway and tourism promotion activities.
Speedway Motorsports would pay $1 million in annual rent with a one percent escalator, $650,000 in Convention and Visitors Corporation rent payments, ticket tax revenue, a share of gross revenue and concessions, facility sponsorship payments up to $600,000 per year with a one percent escalator and 10 percent of facility naming rights net revenue.
Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway would host, on average, a Cup Series race every other year as part of the 10 race event weekends it is permitted to host annually. Â
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.