Putting the pedal to the metal on NASCAR plan
Developer to release new traffic
proposal details in its challenging race to build an 80,000-seat
racetrack
Staten Island Advance - Sunday, January 08, 2006
Among those Islanders caught up in the excitement of
the proposed racetrack are Marge Halvorsen of Annadale, who posed in
front of a NASCAR truck during an autograph session with NASCAR
drivers in front of the Vanderbilt in South Beach. After a year of
set-up and strategic opening moves, 2006 will be crunch time for the
proponents of a NASCAR track on Staten Island.
The NASCAR debate will get a jolt in the next month
or two, when track developer International Speedway Corp. expects to
release new traffic details for its 80,000-seat stadium proposal.
Those details will include computer simulations on
how buses and ferries will shuttle tens of thousands of fans, a
contingency plan if rain postpones a major race to a Monday, and
specific locations for emergency response vehicles and traffic
control centers, says Michael Printup, ISC's New York project
manager.
But will that be enough for the Island's City
Council members, who say they're growing tired of waiting for
specific answers to their traffic questions?
"Finally, after a year of waiting, it's time for
them to put pen to paper and say, 'Here's the new plan,'" says
Councilman James Oddo (R-Mid-Island/Brooklyn), whose district would
house the Bloomfield track. "I'm not known for my patience, in my
personal life and in my political life. And I have been very patient
in 2005. I don't know if I'll have the same level of patience in
2006."
That means getting into the gritty details, and
letting people know exactly how the roads will be affected, right
down to commute times before, during and after a race, says College
of Staten Island professor and traffic expert Cameron Gordon.
"Maybe you can move your buses and ferries, but what
happens to the rest of Staten Island?" Gordon asked. "All that stuff
will move, but what happens if I'm on the Staten Island Expressway?
Am I gonna move?"
The developer maintains that race weekend traffic
will be no worse than a typical weekday rush hour commute.
MILESTONES
ISC started 2005 with a $10 million purchase of
about 230 acres of land, and ended it with key endorsements from
city labor leaders and members of the Island's business community.
Along the way, the developer found resistance from a
new anti-track group and several civic associations, won allies in
other community groups, caught heat from local politicians over a
suggestion to rent out the Staten Island Ferry, and got mixed
reactions over a plan to earmark some of the taxes it pays for
borough road projects.
"One of the big milestones that we wanted to get
past were the elections this past November," said Susan Schandel,
ISC's chief financial officer, during a December conference call
with investors. "We felt like we weren't going to get any support
really publicly until the elected officials had been determined."
Printup, meanwhile, refers to 2006 as a "hump year."
He expects the city land use review process to get
into full swing this year, and he hopes the first step -- when the
city sets up a public "scoping" hearing -- might come in a month or
two.
And though track critics worry that ISC may try to
appeal to off-Island politicians, both Mayor Michael Bloomberg and
the City Council Speaker Christine Quinn have called the borough's
three council representatives crucial to NASCAR's future.
"From a practical point of view, if the three City
Council people from Staten Island are against it, it's conceivable
the rest of the City Council would vote for it, but it's not very
likely," Bloomberg told the Advance in October.
If ISC wants to win Councilman Michael McMahon
(D-North Shore), it'll have to do "a much better job" detailing its
traffic plan.
"I also want to see a full list of benefits to
Staten Island, a list of goodies, if you will, and I also want a
much more comprehensive analysis of the shopping center portion of
the proposal," McMahon says, referring to the 620,000 square-foot
retail center that would accompany the track.
"That's something that has not been focused on," he
says. "It may be the sleeping giant that kills the whole thing."
In the meantime, the track's staunchest opponents
will continue to seek allies among civic and business groups, says
Ronald Lauria, vice president of Staten Island Citizens against the
track, or SCAT.
Once ISC puts together its final plan, Lauria says,
SCAT will go back to those groups and build a united front, then
approach the borough's politicians. "We're waiting on them to come
through with what I believe is just going to be a dressed up traffic
feasibility report. Maybe they'll add a lane here, or change a park
and ride here or there, or change where their headquarters to their
traffic control will be," Lauria says.
"But Staten Island only has so many roads and so
many bridges, and they can't create something out of an
infrastructure that doesn't exist."
By John Annese
Reprinted here with permission
from the
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