RIP Altamont Speedway

Altamont Speedway has died its thousandth death, and no one bothered to show up for the funeral.

It was too sun-baked by day for auto racers in their fireproofed suits, too wind-blasted by night for fans in their layered hoodies, and too noisy on weekends for a few lawyered-up neighbors.
With no proper sendoff, the half-mile track, perched on the back side of Altamont pass, shut down some time after the 2008 season ended in October. The last oval, asphalt track in the Bay Area is closed for the sixth time in its 43 years, and many think this could be the once and for all of it.

"It's the curse of Altamont," said former track promoter Kenny Shepherd. "I wouldn't call it a surprise. It's more a shame."
A shame, Shepherd said, because Altamont Speedway sits in the dark and cold on Memorial Day weekend. This is the most celebrated holiday of the racing calendar, from the Indy 500 to the little big shows at small tracks across America.
Aside from the wandering horses and wild squirrels, all that raced within Altamont's property lines Saturday was loose foxtails and tumbleweed in the 30-mile per hour gusts.

No one seems to know why, but the original owner built the track in the howling center of the Altamont Pass wind corridor. The later it gets, the stiffer the breeze and colder the night.
"They put them windmills on those hills for a reason," current track president Jeff Macey said.
The restrooms were rank no matter how hard the cleaning crew scrubbed. The water in the local well had too much sulfur, giving it the aroma of rotten eggs.
"I've never seen anything like it," Ken Clapp said. He's run some 4,150 single-day shows at 18 race tracks. He was Altamont's promoter for a brief time in 1973.
"It was always something. Grass fires, traffic jams, power failures were imminent. The losses were huge. For every home run, there were 99 failures. I can easily count $12 million that's been lost there and I think it's probably a bigger number than that."
Yet, new owners keep diving in, convinced they can be the ones to turn the track around. The track has burned through nine ownership groups in all. The original owner sold it after three years.

The next in line rented the place out for the "Woodstock of the West" concert featuring the Rolling Stone in December 1969. A crowd of 300,000 trashed the place beyond use. A teenager was stabbed to death....Racing did not return for three years.
"You talk to all the operators and it's the same thing," Shepherd said. "It's a piece of Bay Area property. How can I lose on it? Somehow, someway, they all end up losing."
Current co-owner Mel Andrews wonders why he never got the message.

Andrews is a Southern Californian who invests money for a living and races vintage cars as a hobby.
He wanted to get into track ownership. In 2006, he bought into Altamont as a lead investor in Lakeside Motorsports-Altamont, LLC. He's been losing money ever since, more than he cares to disclose.

"I probably was not aware of the history that it had," Andrews said. "The people that were the lead in running this either weren't aware of it or they weren't as forthright as I would wish they'd be." I kept putting more money into it, so I became a much bigger investor than I had ever dreamed.
"Given what I know now about its history, I would not have gotten involved."
Truth is, no one could have seen what was around the turn.
The group spent $1.8 million in upgrades to a track that was dormant from 2002-05. It operated under a conditional user permit from Alameda County, but it expired in 2006.
The renewal process took on a death of its own.

A new neighbor brought complaints and land-use lawsuits against the track because of the weekly noise. The state Department of Fish and Game held up the track's environmental impact report because the proposed project - adding a sign, awning and caretakers' house - could endanger the San Joaquin kit fox and California tiger salamander.
The county allowed the track to operate last year with restrictions. Races could only run during the day and had to end before nightfall. Current track president Jeff Macey said those rules "strangled" them.

"It's hard enough to get people out there to start with," Macey said. "Then to get them to come there in the heat of the day? That really hurt our fan base."
With the restrictions the county put on us, there was absolutely no way we could be functional as far as making a profit."
That's why the track is closed today. Big events always drew big crowds at Altamont, especially on Memorial Day weekend, but they were never enough to outweigh the weekly overhead of a full season.

"As much as it seems a shame to have it sit there empty," Andrews said, "it's better than having to write a check every month to cover the losses."

"If we could move Altamont race track, pick it up and slide it down the mountain in either direction, it would be an absolute home run," Shepherd said. "Even if you take away the political and neighbor pressure out of the equation, I still don't think it makes it financially because of where it sits.

"That's just a tough place to be."

From The San Francisco Chronicle by Davis White..