Restore Our Fairgrounds organizers have spent months collecting signatures across Davidson County to get the future of the historic racetrack onto next year’s ballot for a citywide vote.
Image: John Spragens speaks to assembled media as the Restore Our Fairgrounds petition is delivered to the Metro Clerk’s office. Image Credit: Martin B. Cherry / Nashville Banner & Canva.
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by Steven Hale [The Nashville Banner, Creative Commons] –
Organizers from the group looking to end auto racing at Nashville’s fairgrounds turned in nearly 75,000 petition signatures Friday, all but guaranteeing that the question will be put to voters in a citywide referendum next year.
If the Davidson County Election Commission certifies that Restore Our Fairgrounds has secured legitimate signatures from 10 percent of currently active county voters — in this case, a little more than 40,000 — it will mark the end of one contentious campaign and the beginning of another. At the Metro Courthouse Friday morning, a group of green-clad amendment supporters stood behind boxes of signed petitions for a press conference and photo-op. Standing among them were two men from the group Decline to Sign, which has opposed the effort.
Restore Our Fairgrounds leaders said they believe it was the largest petition drive for a ballot measure in Tennessee’s history. But they reiterated that it is only really the beginning.
“I think a really important distinction here is that the intent of this petition is simply to get it on the ballot,” the group’s co-founder Mike Kopp said. “We’re about to go through a little less than a year of essentially a campaign to educate the community.”
The proposed Metro Charter amendment would remove auto racing as one of the explicitly required uses of the property known as The Fairgrounds Nashville and replace it with “affordable and/or workforce housing.” If successful, the change would clear the way for the demolition of the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway, which first hosted NASCAR races in the 1950s but has primarily been used for local and regional short track series since 2000. Restore Our Fairgrounds leaders have said they want to see the racetrack replaced with community green space.
“We’re talking about nearly 75,000 Nashvillians who want a chance to vote for green space over asphalt,” Kopp said. “We’re talking about nearly 75,000 Nashvillians who want a chance to vote for neighborhoods over noise and nuisance.”
Organizers from Decline to Sign on Monday said in a release to media that the signature total was only possible through “a campaign of false information and deceptive tactics.”
“With signatures submitted to the Davidson County Election Commission for review, Decline to Sign intends to make sure that all signatures counted by the commission are valid signatures from registered Davidson County voters who knowingly signed,” the group said. “Decline to Sign will pursue any necessary avenues to ensure that only actual, valid registered voters are counted. The integrity of the process is already in question, as registered voters report they have received postcards from the campaign thanking them for a petition signature they never gave.”
The apparently successful petition drive sets up the second citywide referendum in fewer than 20 years that revolves around racing at the fairgrounds. For some in Nashville, the historic-but-decaying track represents a part of the city’s true history and culture, while for many others — particularly in the increasingly popular neighborhoods nearby — it stands for noise and missed opportunity. For years now, the speedway and the fairgrounds property in general have been catalysts for debates — both implicit and explicit — about the city’s identity and how to balance Old Nashville with New Nashville.
In 2011, after then-Mayor Karl Dean’s plan to raze the fairgrounds and build an office park in its place was rejected by the Metro Council, the backlash fueled a citizen petition drive. That effort successfully got a measure put on the ballot that would enshrine the current fairgrounds uses — including auto racing — in the Metro Charter. The amendment also made it so that a future mayor would need 27 votes from the Metro Council to significantly alter or demolish structures at the fairgrounds. Voters overwhelmingly approved the measure, with around 71 percent voting for it.
In the years since, racing has continued along with discussions of what to do with the aging venue and dreams among supporters of bringing NASCAR back to the track. As recently as last year, a deal to overhaul the speedway and start hosting the top-flight stock car series was said to be close. That never came to fruition.
Both IndyCar and NASCAR have annual races at Nashville Superspeedway in Lebanon.
The Restore Our Fairgrounds petition effort follows a similar attempt that stalled in 2024 amid legal challenges. Once the current proposal cleared its own legal hurdles related to the clarity of its language, the ensuing campaign quickly turned ugly with accusations of misinformation and intimidation leading to police reports and ethics complaints.
Each side has also identified a billionaire as the driving malevolent force of the other. Speedway defenders have pointed to businessman and Nashville SC owner John Ingram as the driving force behind Restore Our Fairgrounds. In 2018, when he was asking the Metro Council to support the construction of a stadium for his newly awarded Major League Soccer team, Ingram somewhat infamously said “we at soccer support racing” and the other fairgrounds activities. But more recently, he signaled opposition to race track renovation and expansion. Ingram has not yet fully followed through on commitments to develop affordable housing and childcare — using city-owned land — that were part of securing approval for the stadium.
At Friday’s press conference, Restore Our Fairgrounds leaders sought to highlight the involvement of Marcus Smith, the Charlotte-based owner of Speedway Motorsports Inc., which has been pursuing plans for an overhaul of the fairgrounds racetrack to lure back NASCAR. In an appearance on Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s podcast last month, Smith accused Ingram of funding the referendum effort despite what he claimed was “huge support for renovating the racetrack.”
Polls released in April showed conflicting pictures of public opinion. While one from a pro-racetrack labor union found a majority opposed to demolishing the speedway, a Vanderbilt University survey found a plurality of respondents supported an end to racing. Until the proposed amendment is approved to be on next year’s ballot, neither side is required to disclose their financial supporters.
At Friday’s press conference, John Spragens, an attorney and co-founder of the group Citizens Against Racetrack Expansion, said that operatives paid by the “out-of-state racetrack billionaire” had “bullied, harassed, intimidated and stalked” Restore Our Fairgrounds canvassers in recent months. In response to questions about recent claims from Decline to Sign that some 1,700 people felt they’d been misled and wanted their signatures removed, Spragens said the group worked to verify those claims with the individuals and removed any who asked. He said that ended up being less than one percent of the total signatures.
Heidi Basgall Favorite, who lives near the fairgrounds and co-founded Neighbors Opposing Track Expansion, said Smith wanted to capitalize on Nashville’s success while leaving Nashvillians out of the process.
“So to anyone who questions who’s involved or why, please consider this,” she said. “Would you rather partner with local philanthropists who share our city’s values to restore green space, clean our water and address the city’s affordable housing issues? Or would you rather partner with an out of state racetrack billionaire who wants to bring more pollution, more traffic, more noise and more debt for our city’s taxpayers?”
Favorite said she thinks there’s good reason to believe that voters will support this amendment, despite the overwhelming victory of the one preserving racing at the fairgrounds in 2011.
“I think it was a very different conversation at that time,” she said. “It was actually to protect the fairgrounds in general from becoming an office park and the racing happened to be an existing use of that. … I think what’s also important is that this measure protects all of the things that people love — the flea market, the expo events, soccer will be there — and now hopefully we will have beautiful green space as well.”
Mayor Freddie O’Connell told reporters Friday at his weekly briefing that he is “not convinced that the language is something we should add to the charter” but that he would wait to see if the question goes on the ballot before wading further into the debate.
One Response
Hope racing survives this attack.