[Don]

Source: New York Times.com March 25th:


March 25, 2008
WALL TOWNSHIP JOURNAL
A Speedway’s Last Lap on Memory Lane

By DAVE CALDWELL
WALL TOWNSHIP, N.J. — The replica checkered flag, its white squares dotted with signatures and farewell messages from fans, was propped against the racetrack’s giant marquee, not far from a lone bouquet of flowers still wrapped in cellophane.

“R.I.P. Wall,” one of the squares read.

Suburbia had caught up with yet another patch of New Jersey. Wall Speedway, a racetrack that sits off Route 34 in Monmouth County about 10 minutes from the shore, was closing for good.

Countless racecar drivers have come in under the checkered flag since the one-third mile asphalt oval, originally known as Wall Stadium, was built in 1949 on a 48-acre parcel of woodland by Thomas and Jennie Nicol. The track opened a year later and quickly became a local institution. The Turkey Derby, held on Thanksgiving weekend, was the culmination of each busy season.

“It wasn’t a business,” said Tucker Nicol, Tom and Jennie’s son, who grew up at the track and is now the mayor of Brielle, a few miles south of here. “It wasn’t a job. It was something we loved.”

But as suburbia crept in, first as a post-war trickle and then a flood, the crowds declined, and the site became more valuable for its potential for development. Since 1950, the population of Wall Township has more than tripled to about 26,000 from almost 7,500. Yet the Saturday night crowds at the speedway, which once numbered in the thousands, often barely reached 1,000 in recent seasons.

Finally, last Friday, the season was canceled, and the four owners who bought the track from the Nicols in 2002 said they intend to sell the property.

“Various deals are on the table” for the site, Tim Shinn, the managing partner, said in a telephone interview last week. Some envision an office park there.

The tract is only a mile from the cloverleaf where Interstate 195 and the Garden State Parkway meet; neither highway was there when Tom Nicol cleared the ground after he and Jennie bought the property at a tax sale.

Short tracks — those less than one mile long — once dotted the state. As recently as 2000, there were three paved short tracks in New Jersey, including ones in Flemington and East Windsor. All three have shut down.

New Jersey has always been a state with grease under its nails. A dirt track is still open in New Egypt; there are three drag strips in operation scattered throughout the state; and a complex with two road courses is under construction in Millville, in Cumberland County.

But when Wall Speedway closed last week, an era ended.

In its heyday, packs of cars raced around the dimly lighted track on Saturday nights in the spring and summer, whipping up smoke, fumes and an ear-splitting racket. The cars were owned by local drivers, and relatives and friends worked on their crews. Entranced young spectators grew up and became drivers.

Besides playing host to races on Nascar’s lower circuits, Wall Stadium was the home track for such New Jersey speed demons as Martin Truex Jr., who has graduated to Nascar’s glamorous Sprint Cup series, and Ray Evernham, who became the sport’s most celebrated crew chief and is now a team owner.

“I was thinking to myself the other day that if Wall was never there, I never would have started racing,” said Jimmy Blewett, a racecar driver who grew up in nearby Brick. “If there are no short tracks, there are going to be no up-and-coming drivers from here. What it’s going to come down to is that the drivers will all be this guy and that guy’s nephews.”

Over the years, however, the speedway went from being the main attraction to just one of many diversions in an area that has become blanketed with homes. Malls and multiplexes abound. A minor league baseball team in Lakewood, 10 miles south of here, draws large crowds.

“You’re fighting for the entertainment dollar more today than you ever have in the past,” said Jim Morton, the track manager.

When Jennie Nicol died in 2001, seven years after Tom, her hearse made a lap around the speedway on its way to the graveyard. Then the family sold the track to the four investors, all fans of the speedway, who tried to keep the tradition alive.

In 2004, the new owners considered putting a drive-in movie screen in the gravel parking lot next to the oval, but the township opposed it. They considered scheduling Sunday night racing this year, but it was too late.

“There were a lot of people set to pull the parachute in the years prior, but we gave it the good old college try,” Mr. Shinn said.

These days, the lower tiers of auto racing are battling for dollars with Nascar; 7 of 36 Sprint Cup races are to be held this season on Saturday nights, when the short tracks used to rule. All of those races are nationally televised.

“It is very difficult to make money at this time running a short track,” said Jim Hunter, a Nascar spokesman. “Racing a car is more expensive, and the guys who are driving have to buy their own gas, which has gone up.”

But life is all about change, and stock car racing, especially at places like Wall Township, is certainly not immune.