By REID TUCKER
Nestled amidst the foothills of the mountains east of Birmingham, Ala., is Barber Motorsports Park, an international-tier auto racing venue that might just be a glimpse of DeFuniak Springs’ future.
Mayor Bob Campbell spent Thursday, Oct. 22, visiting the park alongside Jeffrey Osborn, president and CEO of Stable of Speed, a proposed multi-brand luxury car dealership primed for launch somewhere along U.S. 98 in Walton County, and Alabama Charlie, the charismatic, enigmatic publisher of Destin’s BlackTie Motorsport magazine. The trio toured the grounds of the 830-acre motorsports complex, which hosts several major auto racing organizations throughout the year, including the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series, the AMA Superbike Championship, and the park’s signature event, the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama.
Those annual events, and particularly the IndyCar race weekend, bring hundreds of thousands of visitors to Birmingham each year, and have an estimated total economic impact of more than $30 million.
The purpose of the trip was to give Campbell an idea of what could be in store for DeFuniak Springs if plans for a similar world-class motorsports complex were to come to fruition. Campbell and Osborn, as well as other members of the team of investors involved with the proposed venture, have been talking for weeks about the project and what it could mean for DeFuniak. Now, having experienced Barber for himself, the mayor is fairly well sold on the idea of a major racetrack in the city.
“The track is just beyond belief,” Campbell said. “I wanted to come up here to see for myself what I’m encouraging to happen in our community. I’m doing everything I can to learn what this means, and right now I’m looking something that has the capability to produce not just a handful of jobs, but many jobs for the city and really the whole area.”
Many jobs are indeed projected to be associated with such a track, should it open in DeFuniak Springs, and the estimated yearly economic impacts – assuming participation from highest-level motorsports organizations like NASCAR, IndyCar or Formula 1, all of which are possibilities – are staggering. Using Barber as an example, the investment team predicts a DeFuniak motorsports park (which is projected to cost $80 million to build) could create upward of 500 to 1,000 new jobs and could contribute $50 million per year to the local economy. And that’s just for starters: 10 years down the road, that number could rise to something like $250 million annually, according to projections from the well-connected and well-heeled investment team.
The key, Osborn said, is the natural inclination of a major motorsports development to attract not just racing fans by the droves but other tangentially related industries as well. A racetrack of the caliber that he and the other principals are talking about for DeFuniak would likely bring with it a boom in the hospitality, retail and entertainment sectors, as well as automotive service, sales, manufacturing and research and development. The end result is what Osborn called a “multi-modal motorsports experience,” something greater than the sum of its parts.
“This is the opportunity to bring something (to the area) that’s very company-synergistic,” Osborn said. “That’s what’s going to motivate [companies] to show up and actually do something. The racetrack is like a positive black hole. It will start to suck other things into it.”
Though not many details can be made public at this time, Campbell laid out some of the basics of the proposed plan for a racetrack at the Oct. 26 City Council meeting, receiving an enthusiastic response from the audience at City Hall. Campbell said the investors (one of which is Jeff Andretti, youngest son of legendary racer Mario Andretti) haven’t yet met with the Florida Departments of Environmental Protection and Transportation, but he’ll be more forthcoming with information after that meeting in a few weeks’ time. For now, all that can be said about the development and construction plans is that the investors are primarily looking at the 1,400-acre Pickett property south of Interstate 10, of which at least 800 acres are needed to realize their vision for the park.
Campbell said he wants to set up a public workshop sometime in the coming weeks in order to gather input from residents and to air out all the details of the plan after such details can fully be made known. In the meantime, Alabama Charlie, who acts as the de facto liaison between the mayor and the investment team, is already hard at work promoting the idea of a motorsports park for the city, with several upcoming events, including an exotic sportscar rally on Nov. 7, aimed at just that. Furthermore, he hinted at the possibilities soon to present themselves in the form of the billion-plus RESTORE Act dollars earmarked for the rehabilitation and diversification of the Gulf Coast’s economy.
“This racetrack could be a real triumph for DeFuniak Springs,” Charlie said.
Nestled amidst the foothills of the mountains east of Birmingham, Ala., is Barber Motorsports Park, an international-tier auto racing venue that might just be a glimpse of DeFuniak Springs’ future.
Mayor Bob Campbell spent Thursday, Oct. 22, visiting the park alongside Jeffrey Osborn, president and CEO of Stable of Speed, a proposed multi-brand luxury car dealership primed for launch somewhere along U.S. 98 in Walton County, and Alabama Charlie, the charismatic, enigmatic publisher of Destin’s BlackTie Motorsport magazine. The trio toured the grounds of the 830-acre motorsports complex, which hosts several major auto racing organizations throughout the year, including the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series, the AMA Superbike Championship, and the park’s signature event, the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama.
Those annual events, and particularly the IndyCar race weekend, bring hundreds of thousands of visitors to Birmingham each year, and have an estimated total economic impact of more than $30 million.
The purpose of the trip was to give Campbell an idea of what could be in store for DeFuniak Springs if plans for a similar world-class motorsports complex were to come to fruition. Campbell and Osborn, as well as other members of the team of investors involved with the proposed venture, have been talking for weeks about the project and what it could mean for DeFuniak. Now, having experienced Barber for himself, the mayor is fairly well sold on the idea of a major racetrack in the city.
“The track is just beyond belief,” Campbell said. “I wanted to come up here to see for myself what I’m encouraging to happen in our community. I’m doing everything I can to learn what this means, and right now I’m looking something that has the capability to produce not just a handful of jobs, but many jobs for the city and really the whole area.”
Many jobs are indeed projected to be associated with such a track, should it open in DeFuniak Springs, and the estimated yearly economic impacts – assuming participation from highest-level motorsports organizations like NASCAR, IndyCar or Formula 1, all of which are possibilities – are staggering. Using Barber as an example, the investment team predicts a DeFuniak motorsports park (which is projected to cost $80 million to build) could create upward of 500 to 1,000 new jobs and could contribute $50 million per year to the local economy. And that’s just for starters: 10 years down the road, that number could rise to something like $250 million annually, according to projections from the well-connected and well-heeled investment team.
The key, Osborn said, is the natural inclination of a major motorsports development to attract not just racing fans by the droves but other tangentially related industries as well. A racetrack of the caliber that he and the other principals are talking about for DeFuniak would likely bring with it a boom in the hospitality, retail and entertainment sectors, as well as automotive service, sales, manufacturing and research and development. The end result is what Osborn called a “multi-modal motorsports experience,” something greater than the sum of its parts.
“This is the opportunity to bring something (to the area) that’s very company-synergistic,” Osborn said. “That’s what’s going to motivate [companies] to show up and actually do something. The racetrack is like a positive black hole. It will start to suck other things into it.”
Though not many details can be made public at this time, Campbell laid out some of the basics of the proposed plan for a racetrack at the Oct. 26 City Council meeting, receiving an enthusiastic response from the audience at City Hall. Campbell said the investors (one of which is Jeff Andretti, youngest son of legendary racer Mario Andretti) haven’t yet met with the Florida Departments of Environmental Protection and Transportation, but he’ll be more forthcoming with information after that meeting in a few weeks’ time. For now, all that can be said about the development and construction plans is that the investors are primarily looking at the 1,400-acre Pickett property south of Interstate 10, of which at least 800 acres are needed to realize their vision for the park.
Campbell said he wants to set up a public workshop sometime in the coming weeks in order to gather input from residents and to air out all the details of the plan after such details can fully be made known. In the meantime, Alabama Charlie, who acts as the de facto liaison between the mayor and the investment team, is already hard at work promoting the idea of a motorsports park for the city, with several upcoming events, including an exotic sportscar rally on Nov. 7, aimed at just that. Furthermore, he hinted at the possibilities soon to present themselves in the form of the billion-plus RESTORE Act dollars earmarked for the rehabilitation and diversification of the Gulf Coast’s economy.
“This racetrack could be a real triumph for DeFuniak Springs,” Charlie said.