My ol’ hometown of Marysville just keeps getting in the news. The big new casino, weird teen murder cases, and now a potential NASCAR car-racing track. The course, and its 75,000 seats, would be situated four miles due north of the little home on 67th Ave. NE where I grew up.
At the time, I was usually bored out of my skull, frustrated at the quiet rural lifestyle. That all since went away for suburban sprawl long ago, of course. But there are still a few parcels of undeveloped land, still occupied by horses and a few cows. A developer has chosen a block of those parcels, totalling 600 acres, to build its track.
Auto racing was never a huge sport in Washington. Evergreen Speedway (east of Marysville in Monroe) and the old Seattle International Raceway were, even at their peaks, minor stops on the second-tier racing tours. The Indy Racing League has had stops in Vancouver, BC and Portland, OR, but never here. NASCAR, the old stock-car circuit that’s become America’s fastest growing sports enterprise, has ignored our entire quadrant of the continent until now.
The track will only operate four days a year, turning the whole area into a temporary traffic hell. The rest of the time it’ll probably be available for other events (Wrestlemania, The Big Ol’ Used Car Sale, rock concerts, international rugby matches, swap meets, RV parking, performance art, etc.).
There are, of course, folk in the area who don’t want the thing. They want to preserve the area’s country lifestyle, as if it still had one.
And the notion of a NASCAR track in Puget Sound country represents almost a “perfect storm” of everything my conformist-nonconformist pals love to hate—suburbia, pro sports, automobiles, gasoline consumption, rednecks, crowds, noise, urban sprawl, corporate endorsements, straight white males, Southern accents, fast food containing meat ingredients, and (horrors above all possible horrors!) television.
So of course I want it.
From a land-use standpoint, it’d be better if the developers built on an already-paved site, such as that of Evergreen Speedway or some of Boeing’s surplus Renton/Kent land.
And I’ve few illusions about the supposed economic boost of such a facility. Race-goers will stop for food and/or gas on the way to and from the races, but they might not do so in or near Marysville.
But I want them to build it anyway. Anything to bring some excitement to the place.
And besides, city and suburb folk could use some contact with the oft-stereotyped “NASCAR dad” fans. They might learn we’re not really all that different. We all want a better life for ourselves and our kin. We’d all rather not die prematurely, whether due to a lack of world peace or to a lack of health insurance. We all like life, liberty, and happiness-pursuin’.
And a goodly number of us, of all political stripes, like to see stuff go fast.
