Time To Shutter NASCAR’s Hall Of Fame

Sam Sharpe-USA TODAY Sports

NASCAR’s Hall of Fame is getting closer getting a private sector bail out.

Despite losing $3 million in the past two years NASCAR’s self serving showcase not only continues to operate, but is getting closer to having $21 million in loans either modified or forgiven entirely. Already the benefit of $200 million public funding the falling venue continues to bleed money, and is now bringing out the begging bowls for Wells Fargo and Bank of American, asking the banks to forgive some of its debt instead of cutting losses and closing the hall.

Optimistically projected to see 400,000 visitors a year the hall does about a third of that and loses over $1.1 million annual. The taxpayers of Charlotte picks up the deficit every year. As far as I can tell NASCAR’s owning family hasn’t invested much, if any funds in the project meant to promote their sport. As I understand it, not only did NASCAR not invest anything in the hall, they’re actually due royalty payments. As a former journalist who has no dog in this fight it seems like maybe the tax payers got a raw deal. Still, better Charlotte than Atlanta.

I first became aware that NASCAR felt it deserved a Palace of Versailles-style homage to itself about 10 years ago when Atlanta was bidding to host the series. NASCAR pitted Atlanta, Charlotte, Kansas City and Richmond against each for the rights to host the hall, although it was pretty obvious to everyone that the Atlanta media the HoF was going to Charlotte, the other cities were just involved to bid the price up.

To me Atlanta was, and still is, the obvious choice for the HoF, but Charlotte won because that’s where the teams are. Not that I wanted the HoF in Atlanta, but it’s hard to argue that it wouldn’t be more successful in Atlanta.

Planned for Centennial Olympic Park in downtown the HoF would have been adjacent to the World of Coke and the Georgia Aquarium on the land currently occupied by the College Football Hall of Fame. The College Football Hall of Fame expects to see about 500,000 visitors a year, and the World of Coke and the Aquarium do 1.1 million and 2.2 million annually, so it’s a reasonable goal.

Instead of being next door to two venues that see more than a million visitors a year NASCAR chose Charlotte…. They chose the town with no arts district, bar district, historic significance or natural beauty for tourist-dependent attraction. Charlotte, if you’ve never, been is a suburb built around laws favorable to the banking industry.

The NASCAR HoF probably could have done 400,000 in Atlanta just based on spillover traffic from all the other attractions in downtown, but NASCAR choose Charlotte. The Queen City’s“gain” was Atlanta’s win. Instead of being saddled with $130 million in public debt the city, county and state contributed a little less than $1 million to the College Football HoF. So not only did Atlanta get away with avoiding a palace for a sport that’s lost more than one million fans since it the HoF was proposed, it got a comparable attraction for a fraction of the public cost.

Three years after its opened it’s time for the city or NASCAR to pull the trigger and either cut it down to a profitable size or close it down. The public has already wasted enough money in the vanity project. There clearly isn’t the demand for the a HoF on this level, so they should shut it down, scale it down, and maybe open a smaller HoF at Charlotte Motor Speedway or Daytona International Speedway, where it might be profitable on a smaller scale.