What does Nashville really want to do about the Fairgrounds Speedway? That depends on who you talk to, and when you talk to them.
Support for updating the Speedway has been strong for more than a decade. But that may be changing.
A poll released last week by a group that proposed demolishing the track in favor of affordable housing and a drag strip for “electric car racing” — to make the proposal compliant with a 2011 Metro charter referendum — found a plurality of respondents opposing further investment in the Speedway.
The survey was provocative, partly because it ran counter to polling conducted by proponents of a deal to inject state and Metro funds into the track and return big-time racing to Nashville. That June poll said that Nashvillians would support an upgrade to the track if they just knew more about the plan.
The track is historically significant for racing fans, having hosted NASCAR races for decades until the 1980s. But anyone who’s spent time at the facility recently knows it badly needs an upgrade.
If we’re trying to sort out what the city thinks, there are at least three relevant data points:
71 percent (August 2011)
During Mayor Karl Dean’s first term, he proposed demolishing the Fairgrounds site in favor of an office park, a political miscalculation that boomeranged badly. Fairgrounds supporters rallied supporters of three disparate groups — racing lovers, flea market fans and the Tennessee State Fair attendees — to codify permanent protection for those usages into the Metro charter.
When voters went to the polls, 71 percent voted to keep the racetrack and sheds that housed the flea market (and other events). That’s an impressive number, and one race fans have touted for years as broad support for racing. But coalitions have a way of changing over time: The Tennessee State Fair moved to Wilson County and the Nashville Flea Market has never returned in size or quality to pre-COVID levels. Whatever political muscle those groups brought to the coalition has diminished.
And the Nashville of 2023 is a much different place than the Nashville of 2011, both politically and economically. In the mayoral election, Alice Rolli got little to no noticeable bump from the Save Our Fairgrounds supporters even though she took up their cause and supported a racetrack deal. Does that 71 percent support number mean anything today? Probably, but certainly not at a level that high.
42 percent (June 2023)
“From what you may know, do you support or oppose the proposal between Metro Government and Bristol Motor Speedway to renovate and operate the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway?”
This was the question a pollster hired by racing supporters asked Nashvillians in June, with 42 percent supporting the deal and 30 percent opposing it. Here’s the entire poll. The deal died when Mayor John Cooper’s administration couldn’t overcome Metro Council resistance. Notably, it failed in the middle of an election cycle that saw Freddie O’Connell find significant support by opposing the Titans stadium proposal.
The poll, conducted by respected pollster Fred Yang, found that only 29 percent of Nashvillians knew of a racetrack deal in June. Yang concluded that “means that attitudes toward the agreement could quickly change depending on which side communicates more.” In a “low-information environment,” he argued, the racetrack supporters had “the upper hand in the upcoming debate.”
The poll tested several messages that Yang said had public support, including Bristol Motor Speedway taking over the track and bringing a NASCAR race to Nashville every other year.
That might have been true except for one thing: politics. Mayoral candidate Jim Gingrich spent more than $250,000 on TV ads to highlight his opposition to the plan. And while Gingrich could not turn the opposition into support, he did inject some negative opinion into the “low-information environment.” The fight in the Metro Council also appears to have generated some negative opinion about the deal as well.
44 percent (November 2023)
Opponents of the deal released a poll last week that found 44 percent opposed the deal with Bristol versus 41 percent supporting it. Here’s the full poll. That’s a significant change in the opinion environment in five months.
The poll, like the June poll, was conducted by a respected pollster. GBAO Strategies worked for multiple clients in this summer’s local elections and was generally regarded as one of the more accurate pollsters. One of the most interesting nuggets in the survey was this:
“About 1-in-3 Nashvillians have visited the Fairgrounds in the last year and among those who have visited, very few visit for auto racing. Among those who visited, 49 percent went for a flea market, 35 percent for a soccer game, 32 percent for the fair, and only 11 percent for auto racing,” wrote the pollster in a memo. Of the people who go to the Fairgrounds, almost 90 percent go for something other than racing. That number begins to explain the tough road track supporters have to travel when building support.
Now racing opponents, in the form of the newly created Fairground Preservation Partners, are proposing affordable housing and park space instead of a renovated track. But less important than a specific plan for the space — which seems custom-built to troll the racetrack fans — is the fact that support for a racetrack deal is much softer than it was this summer.
NASCAR returns to Nashville this week for its annual NASCAR Awards event, a star-studded affair that usually generates lots of quotes from racers and sponsors about how much they love the city and want to race here again.
In 2021, Cooper used this event to announce the Fairgrounds Speedway deal that never happened. With a new administration and public opinion murkier than ever, it’s an open question whether proponents of a significant racetrack expansion have missed their window.