Gateway

[Alan Roehrich]

Rob may have better information than I do, I don't know for sure. My understanding, from several articles, and from some of the contractors who built the Nashville Superspeedway, is that Dover Downs Development owns the subsidiary, Dover Motorsports. One of the major shareholders of the parent company, who, by himself cannot force decisions, but wields a great deal of power, wants the motorsports (track owning) part of the business gone. He cannot force that issue entirely by himself, but he can make things very difficult for the motorsports business.

If you think about it, a guy in that position who wanted rid of the tracks could make it nearly impossible to keep a track truly profitable, especially if the track was in a difficult market and/or situation. Hence it was possible to shutter Memphis, even if it didn't sell. It's not hard to see that the same thing could be ahead for Gateway, and probably Nashville.

They've never finished any of the other parts of the Nashville complex, the preliminary work is there for a drag strip, and other circle tracks. The old Nashville track downtown is in the process of being shut down, if it isn't already closed. The original plan had the superspeedway picking up the weekly local program, but they didn't close the old track. There has been no mention of the superspeedway getting the weekly local program going.

So I think any Dover Motorsports track that isn't thriving is in serious jeopardy, even more than another track in the same economic position would be.