STATEN ISLAND, NY -- NASCAR fans who had hoped the stock cars would be coming to the Big Apple can cross that one off their to-visit list.International Speedway Corp., which had hoped to construct a track here on Staten Island, one of New York's five boroughs, has called off the project.
"While we are disappointed that we could not complete the speedway development on Staten Island, our enthusiasm for the metropolitan New York market is in no way dampened," ISC president Lesa France Kennedy said in a public statement Monday. "We continue to view the region as a prime location for a major motorsports facility."
Kennedy runs ISC, the publicly-traded sister company of NASCAR. The two entities had hoped to create a $150 million complex that would seat at least 80,000 fans on a former oil tank farm. The company had purchased 676 acres to do so.
Strong local opposition, based on fear of traffic tie-ups and environmental concerns, stalled the project and led to the decision to forego it and sell off the land, which real estate experts describe as the largest undeveloped acreage in the five boroughs.
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