Rob McCurdy: Mansfield's drag strip delayed, not dead
By ROB MCCURDY • News Journal • May 29, 2008
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The proposed Mansfield Motorsports Park drag strip could be coming back to life. In fact, it's closer to a resurrection today than anytime since construction was halted in the early spring of 2007.
Why?
"Why not?" MMP owner and President Mike Dzurilla said in a wide-ranging exclusive interview. "Why am I talking about this now? Why not?"
Timing is everything and big projects take time. From the start, both were off.
The announcement in late summer of 2006 that MMP was building a drag strip to host the International Hot Rod Association's World Nationals was rushed by circumstances. Summit Motorsports Park reached a deal with the NHRA to move its event from Newark to Norwalk, leaving the IHRA's biggest event without a home.
Dzurilla, who has strong ties to the drag racing community, saw an opportunity to complete his dream by building a world-class drag strip, and the IHRA saw a way to save some face with a positive announcement after losing an important date in its schedule.
It was a win-win situation -- if things went according to plan.
That didn't happen. Dzurilla is one who never likes to show his hand until after the game is played out. This time, he made the announcement before all the cards were dealt. Hoping he had pocket aces, it turns out he was stuck with an off-suit deuce and trey, hardly a pot-stealing play.
He found the financing in the fall of 2006 and construction started in the winter. It was halted within days because of issues with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency. Construction started back up only to be stopped again.
"The issue is a stream and it is a stream," Dzurilla said. "They've classified it as a stream, so it's a stream. Now it's under the Clean Water Act where you have to be careful of streams."
While trying to figure out how to build the quarter-mile strip without messing up a waterway, then General Manager Chris Mize contacted the News Journal to complain about the EPA stifling the project. He did this without Dzurilla's blessing.
"We ran into an EPA issue. It wasn't a problem. A problem is when they're fining me every day and sending me certified mail; now I have a problem. We had an EPA issue. The drama blew that way out of the water," Dzurilla said.
Then other issues surfaced.
Wade Rich, hired on to run the drag strip and see the project through, left. Mize resigned abruptly in April of 2007 less than six weeks before the start of the season with the annual NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race looming. Legal issues with Mize sprung up later that summer which caused more distractions.
Also in the interim, yet another issue emerged.
"We all know the situation the banks are in now," he said. "That source of funding I had a year-and-a-half ago is gone now."
Adding to the frustration was two companies were in talks about naming rights for the new track, but neither would sign until it was built. Dzurilla said he couldn't get the lending needed unless he had a naming rights contract in hand. It was a catch-22.
So, he made the decision to back-burner the drag strip to concentrate on the half-mile oval and its special events-only schedule while grooming new general manager Bill Conn. He said he felt tired and beat up by the project and needed the last year to refocus and recharge.
"I've never lost sight of it," Dzurilla said. "Of course, I would have liked to have seen it built two years ago and certainly last year, but I'm eating the elephant one bite at a time."
He's going back to the way he did business before.
"We always (did announcements) after the fact, that way if we ran into a regulatory issue or a financial issue or a weather issue, it wasn't that big of a deal. That seemed to work really well," he said.
Dzurilla vows he's not going to make any more proclamations until the concrete is pored.
"There are so many things that can happen that I have no control over," he said. "I didn't mean to get people's hopes up. There was nobody more disappointed that it's not built than me."
Knowing all that, what's the best case scenario regarding the future of the drag strip?
"We meet with the EPA and they say let's do it. You adopt me and I spend my inheritance early and build a drag strip," he joked.
What isn't a joking matter is that Dzurilla met with EPA officials last week.
"They were very receptive and we had a great beginning dialogue and we'll continue to have these dialogues," he said after Saturday's successful NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Ohio 250.
So the drag strip is not a dead issue.
rmccurdy@nncogannett.com 419-521-7241
Wow ...I would think the future of any race-track financing these days would be on parallel with the HOME LOAN garbage.