Godforsaken Dot On The Map Covets NASCAR



The NY Times' Charles V. Bagli and Eric Dash report this morning on the difficulties in building a NASCAR facility on Staten Island.

Four million cubic yards of silt from the bottom of New York Harbor would be needed to raise the height of the property so that it would not be underwater during severe rainstorms.

The site, once home to an oil tank farm, would have to be certified as environmentally clean.

The muskrats, herons and ibises and other not-so-endangered species in 100 acres of marshland would have to be protected. And a way would have to be found to move an estimated 80,000 fans to and from the site, which is surrounded by crowded highways, three weekends a year.

Those are the major hurdles facing the developers who hope to turn a 600-acre parcel near the Goethals Bridge on Staten Island into the ideal site for a Nascar speedway with a ¾-mile oval track, an 80,000-seat grandstand and a 500,000-square-foot shopping mall.

Said article is headlined "Speedway Company Faces Major Obstacles To Bring Nascar to S.I.". I might submit another major obstacle : only rubes, rednecks and retards want to watch a bunch of saloon cars going around and around in a circle. If residents of the Tri-State Area are desperate for motor sport with more than its share of brutal competition and potential for mass casualties, they already have a suitable venue where such events happen around the clock. It's called the Long Island Expressway.

Posted: Sun - July 18, 2004 at 05:53 AM      

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