Canaan
The Canaan Motor Club, formerly Canaan Fair Speedway, opened its doors to car enthusiasts this past fall under a new name and a new target audience than the stock car fans that had flocked to the property under its previous use. Today, the 1.4-mile road course can be rented out to patrons looking to get their speed fix.
“If you look where motor sports is going, it’s more road courses that people are interested in,” Gerngross said last week. “It’s less of a spectator sport. It’s more like this, where a bunch of guys — whether it’s Miatas, BMW clubs, vintage motorcycles or motorcycle schools — they want to have a facility where they can do their stuff, where it’s safe.”
Gerngross, a professor at Dartmouth College’s Thayer School of Engineering, purchased Canaan Fair Speedway in October 2013, taking full ownership from Sandy and Chick Henry, of West Lebanon, who owned the Speedway since 2006. Gerngross said at the time he paid in the neighborhood of $675,000 for the property.
Canaan Fair Speedway ran into financial trouble under its previous ownership, as the track lost an estimated $140,000 a year. Added to a contentious relationship the speedway had with the town, and it soon became clear, to Gerngross and Canaan town administrator Mike Samson, that something needed to change.
“When I first got here (in 2010), the biggest complaint in town was the noise and dust from stock car races,” Samson said last week.
“With a dirt and asphalt track, the dust storm used to be terrible. And there’s no limitation on noise. A lot of people were opposed to it, not just people in town but up and down the valley. The entire town was upset with the noise.”
Gerngross took the noise and dust complaints from the town into consideration, as well as the losses that the speedway’s previous owners had sustained. In the end, a private track seemed like the best approach, not just for profit but in attempt to re-establish a working relationship with the town.
“It’s not quite profitable yet,” Gerngross said. “But I’m pretty confident we’ll get there.”
At first, the speedway’s property needed an overhaul — particularly, some tidying up.
“It was a dump,” Gerngross said. “There was trash everywhere, everything from washing machines, old trailers, old barbecue equipment. Just a complete mess. … It was basically used as an illegal recycling center.”
Gerngross, on top of the initial purchase price, invested nearly $2 million in cleanup, landscaping and renovation. The new road course uses part of the old stock car oval and extends it to create 12 different turns. Asphalt paving was completed in 2015. This year, the Motor Club already had 50 scheduled events.
Gerngross knows the Motor Club will attract a much different clientele than in its stock car racing days. Cost to rent the track starts at $2,500 a day for 10 cars or fewer.
“I’m interested in the economic development aspect of it,” Gerngross said. “If you look at the old speedway, there was $150,000 that went out to pay insurance … and NASCAR because these were NASCAR-sanctioned events and you have to pay NASCAR to use their name. If you look at the economic development side of it, that was $150,000 that was going from here to elsewhere. I was interested in reversing that.
“It’s a totally different crowd,” he added. “They’re mostly from out of state, but they all come here to be at this track.”
The hope, for both Gerngross and Samson, is that the new Canaan Motor Club can attract a much different customer base to town, jump-starting the need for places to stay, eat and purchase goods with the club as its draw.
“The hope is that this brings people to Canaan,” Samson said. “What we have now is environmental opportunities, commercial opportunities, craftspeople and the like. We’re hoping the Motor Club can be a stimulus for new businesses, several of which are in the planning stages, that would cater to locals and visitors. If anything, the track is a stimulus for new opportunities.”
The next stage in the Motor Club’s development is a multimillion-dollar garage for collectors’ vehicles, scheduled to be completed in 2017. The facility will include 12 bays — some climate-controlled, some not — for car storage, a clubhouse, classrooms for driving instruction and an onsite mechanic shop. Purchasing one bay in the storage facility will cost about $40,000 and will come with full use of the Motor Club’s track.
As for the grandstands, which still bear the name Canaan Fair Speedway, Samson and the town are in the process of renovating the area as a place for spectators. “People are concerned about (the grandstands),” Samson said. “They feel like they’re losing something. Problem is those grandstands were not legal. … They were built 80 years ago with no maintenance.”
“I’ve done high-performance racing days out on the West Coast at Laguna Seca (Mazda Raceway), and I really enjoyed that,” Gerngross said. “I just thought, ‘Hey, we already have a racetrack, it’s really loud, really dusty, really annoys the people who live here, and brings very little value to the people of this community.’
“The goal is to reverse that. … This is bringing money to Canaan.”
Josh Weinreb can be reached at jweinreb@vnews.com or at 603-727-3306.