By Louis Brewster, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
POSTED: 10/19/13, 5:24 PM PDT |
FONTANA >> It’s quite ironic that an issue that centered around too much noise at Auto Club Dragway has quietly been settled.
Perhaps as early as Monday, work will start on a sound wall located on the northern boundary of the Auto Club Speedway that will resume in a drag race season at the track in 2014. The quarter-mile strip had been at the center of dispute for four years.
In July, 2012, the track announced it had reached a settlement with a “local group concerned citizens in the San Bernardino County area known as CcoMPRESS (Concerned Community Members and Parents of Redwood Elementary School Students)” to resume racing if a certain number of conditions were met.
The group, led by landowner Salvador Lopez, had sought to close the dragstrip.
The major part of the settlement was the sound wall, estimated to be about a half-mile in length located between the drag strip and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad tracks. There has been no official word on the cost but early estimated were around $1 million.
“It’s important to the industry and Southern California,” said ACS president Gillian Zucker in announcing the development. She said the “intense dedication” by sponsors Auto Club of Southern California, NHRA, SEMA and K&N Filters were the foundation of the decision to return to drag racing.
“We are truly recognizing that with our oval, road course and other activities, we’ve got everything going,” said Zucker. “We didn’t feel we could truly be a motorsports complex if we didn’t have straight-line racing.
“We plan to return to NHRA racing in 2014.”
Zucker was pivotal in moving the drag strip from the original location south of the main grandstands to its present location in 2010 upon the expansion of the FunZone.
The original drag strip started with NHRA Street Legal programs but soon evolved with the addition of NHRA Lucas Oil Sportsmen events, such as the Pacific SportNationals, and PCRA events.
Zucker said the speedway had been working with San Bernardino County officials, specifically Supervisor Janice Rutherford to complete the project.
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