NASCAR firm wants to split track cost 50-50 with taxpayers

Developers of a proposed Kitsap County NASCAR track say they want "an even split" with taxpayers on the track's $330 million cost.

That would be a "massively bigger" share than the Florida-based International Speedway Corp. offered when it tried to build the track in Snohomish County, company vice president Grant Lynch said Wednesday.

The company last year offered $50 million in its aborted sales pitch for the Snohomish County track.

The new Kitsap County offer suggests that the company knows its project will be a hard sell to state legislators, said state Rep. John McCoy, D-Tulalip.

"We've told them to their face: 'Look ... you're going to have to put up a substantial amount of money — of your money,' " McCoy said.

The company wants the state to borrow money to help cover constructions costs. The payback would be added sales tax revenue collected from people visiting the state to go to NASCAR races. In addition, the county would borrow money and repay it with an admissions tax on race tickets, say company officials.

Florida-based ISC bought about 900 acres of property near the Bremerton Airport and wants to start racing in 2010 on a one-half-mile, 80,000-seat NASCAR track.

Under the company's proposal, Kitsap County would own the track and lease it to ISC. It would be used for about three major race weekends a year, Lynch said. The company has said the track would generate nearly $140 million in new revenue annually to the state.

Snohomish County officials last year withdrew from negotiations in part because they were concerned that taxpayers would end up footing too much of the bill.

Neither Lynch nor the company's director of public affairs, Sue Santa, would say how much public money they're hoping to get. They said they were still in negotiations.

"To say that it's going to be exactly 50-50 right now ... that would be presumptuous of us to say exactly what it's going to be," Santa said.

Lynch said: "It might be 52 one way and 48 the other ... but balanced, meaning fairly equal partnerships."

Santa told the chamber of commerce at a luncheon Tuesday that it would be "a 50-50 split," said Silvia Klatman, the chamber executive director.

And Klatman said Santa told the chamber the company would help with needed road improvements as well.

ISC plans to release its detailed financial proposal in the next couple of weeks, Santa said.

Gov. Christine Gregoire has not taken a position on the project because she hasn't seen a detailed proposal, said Hal Spencer, a spokesman for the state Office of Financial Management.

State Treasurer Mike Murphy has come out against the project, saying numbers ISC is using to calculate the track's economic benefits are "hokey."

Emily Heffter: 206-464-8246 or eheffter@seattletimes.com