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County greenlights raceway

After years and years of waiting, local racing enthusiasts will soon have a drag strip and road course to call their own.

The Ridge Motorsports Group was granted a use permit to begin construction of its raceway on its property on Eells Hill Rd, bringing racing back to Mason County, said Rod Powell, of the Ridge Group.

"We had to begin the land use process which is the most difficult process in all," he said.

Powell's group has been working since 2008 to get to the point they're at now. In the past several

weeks, crews have been "stumping and grubbing," or pulling stumps and vegetative material out of the ground to get ready for grading. Now that they have the use permit, crews plan to start grading any day now, Powell said.

"We hope that we can have racing surfaces, racing surfaces only, down by the middle of August," Powell said.

The entire facility should be ready for the 2012 racing season, he said.

Powell partnered with Joe Manke several years ago to form the group. Much of the 173 acres of land that will make up the park was once Manke timberland. The group is in the process of acquiring the rest, a 40-acre-parcel, from Green Diamond.

"When Joe Manke and I settled on this particular site, because we'd looked at a bunch of them ... the ridge was the deciding factor because of the topography," Powell said.

The ridge Powell referred to is the parks namesake, a steep ridge right in the middle of the park. Most of the racetrack will be up on the ridge, while the drag strip will be below, in a slightly recessed strip of land, for noise abatement, Powell said.

One of the many challenges in getting all of the necessary permits, Powell said, was zoning.

"The best way to look at this is as a one off the last racetrack that was built in Western Washington was in 1961 so there is no blueprint to work off in both the land use side of things and quite frankly the permitting," Powell said. "We had to find a zone that would accommodate motorsports."

The county settled on the Rural Tourist Campground (RTC) zoning, because it allowed motorsports, and approved the rezone, allowing the Ridge Group to go after permits.

Powell, a long time club level racer, said that Mason County's long history of racing intrigued him, and influenced his decision to invest in building a track here.

"Shelton had a very strong sports car and drag racing history in the mid 1950s to early 1960s," he said. "Before they built Seattle International Raceway, this is where everybody on the West, Coast came to run."

The facility will not only bo unique to the county, Powell saidl, but possibly unique in the country, because unlike most racing facilities, the road course and drag striip will be separate.

"To my knowledge we will Ibe

the only duel racing surface facility on the west coast, in fact, I don't evon know if there's another one in the country," he said.

While some residents in the Eells Hill area voiced concerns about noise generated from the racetrack, Powell argued that noise studies showed that existing barriers, like trees and topog-r aphy, would mitigate any noise piroblem for neighbors. Also, because the facility is designed for non-professional racers, many cars on the track shouldn't be much louder than an average daily driver.

"Most of the activity quite frankly, is street legal cars," he said.

Most importantly, beyond the simple fun of racing, said Powell, a lifelong resident of the area, this racetrack could be a serious, and much needed, "economic engine," in Mason County.

"The reasons these have become economic engines is they're regional draws, they pull out of the metro poles (sic), so people from Seattle and people from Portland who would not normally come here," he said. "So the track becomes a magnet for people to come and spend their recreational dollars."

Powell compared the Ridge Motorsports Park to a similar park near Willows California (population 6,000) the Thunderhill Raceway Park.

"The track created 16 million dollars of economic activity in Willows that would not be there if the track wasn't there," he said. "We expect to match Thunderhill's results."



Copyright 2011 Shelton-Mason County Journal, Shelton, Washington. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from SmallTownPapers, Inc.

© 2011 Shelton-Mason County Journal Shelton, Washington. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from DAS.

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