The love/hate relationship between the city of Concord, North Carolina and O. Bruton Smith’s Speedway Motorsports company has hit a new level with Speedway Motorsports filing a lawsuit against the city looking to be paid for work that they claim the city pledged to pay them for in a contract.
When Smith wanted to build the palatial zMax Dragway near Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord, he was met with major resistance from residents, the local government, and special interest groups. After threatening to dismantle and move the entire speedway to another city, a deal was struck that saw the city giving Smith nearly 80 million dollars in incentives to keep the track there and on the flip side, Smith made various commitments to the city that he would keep the track operating for a length of time.
SMI claims that there was never a formalized agreement on the payment schedule between them and the city and the city claims that they have 40 years to pay Smith back for any infrastructure improvements made by his company to support the tracks.
This is a fairly sizeable mess, but should make more interesting courtroom theater.
