Not sure how we missed this, but on Monday, the same day that the track announced they would be cancelling the entire 2012 season, Irwindale Speedway filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Chapter 11 Bankruptcy is what you file when you intend on reorganizing the business to get yourself out of a hole. Chapter 7 bankruptcy is what you file when you intend on selling assets off and ceasing business operations. It would seem that the cancellation of the 2012 season was done to allow for this filing rather than continuing to operate and reorganize under a Chapter 11 filing.
By doing this, some more details of the track’s operations and structure were revealed. According to a report on ESPN.com, the track is in the hole more than $300,000 to various parties. They owe $55,000 in rent money to the company that actually owns the land the track is built on, Nu-Way Industries Inc.. We believe that Nu-Way is a large metal fabrication company based out of Des Plains, Illinois.
Believe it or not, the largest debts that the track has are for personal injury claims. One of the claims is for $150,000 and there are two more with values not currently known. We do not know if these claims were filed by employees injured on the job, spectators who were injured at events or what. BangShift is actively investigating this and we will try to dig up the source of those claims. Other bills are more mundane. There is money owed for water service, the police (for security details we assume), and to a local newspaper for advertising costs.
According to the ESPN report, the entirety of the property is valued at $31-million dollars. This number came from public documents that county officials provided.
The only thing that is on-going at the track is LA Racing, a driving school that is not directly affiliated with the race track itself. They have apparently been told that business can remain as normal at the track, although the owner of the company believes that he will be paying Nu-Way now instead of Irwindale Speedway LLC.
To us, that is the only glimmer of hope in this whole mess. If the track were going to be squashed and turned into a mini-mall or something, they would have just locked the gate and told everyone, even the driving school, to vacate and be done with it. Nu-Way still owns the property, Irwindale Speedway LLC is the entity that went boobs up, and hopefully there is another group of management/interested parties who want to take the reins and get the place opened back up again.
This is a developing story so we will do our best to keep you updated as any news breaks!
Link: ESPN story on Irwindale
Although I no longer live in California, I do hope that by next year somebody will take over Irwindale and keep it alive. St.Louis had a similar situation with Gateway International, right now it seems that Gateway is headed in the right direction and I can finally race my 340 Duster after having it in storage for 10 years while serving in the US Navy.
They have been trying to sell the track for years the problem is there is no fan base in LA for weekly NASCAR racing the last couple of seasons the attendance is horrible sometimes less than 2000 fans and there is no way to cover the overhead. The drag strip is the only weekly event that helped keep the oval alive. I don’t see anyone wanting to reopen the half mile track to weekly racing again, there are too many other things to do in southern California unless diversify and figure out something to draw a different fan base besides just the diehard NASCAR fans.
I have never been to Irwindale. I do hope that they can re open it. It seems like once a track is gone….. it is gone forever. They don’t build them anymore either. Small race tracks are an asset to racing. If they are gone, then the small guy is out of luck for his hobby.
Irwindale Speedway was a great facility. Great food (King Taco!), excellent restrooms, comfortable stands with great sightlines, plenty of paved parking and a popular 1/8 mile dragstrip to boot. There just was not enough people sitting in those seats to make a go of it.
Fifty years ago, a few hundred yards east of the present Irwindale Speedway, the unsanctioned, outlaw, absolutely wonderful dragstrip called San Gabriel hosted nitromethane events when the NHRA would have none of it. When barely a teenager, I witnessed the Greer, Black and Prudhomme, Chris Karamesines, and Connie Kalitta dragsters smoke the tires down that fabled quartermile along John Mazmanian, Stone, Woods and Cook, TV Tommy Ivo, etc.,etc. What a shame for all race fans.
The old San Gabe’ dragstrip was dynamite. The first time I went there, there were no fences, only hay bales to sit on, and killer fueler racing. I miss that place. Lets hope Irwindale doesn’t go the way of all the other local dragstrips in southern ca.
The track manager got into a pissing match with many of the popular racers and they quit racing. No popular racers = no fans in the stands.
I seriously doubt anything else could be built on the land as it stands. There is a dusty rock crushing plant on one side and dusty rock quarry on the other. Irwindale is where all the rock came from to build LA’s freeway system.