Driving ambition

September 13, 2008
Nelson's motorsport fraternity has been searching for years for a base where it won't have to worry about complaining neighbours and public protest. Has it finally found the answer? Geoff Collett reports. --------------------
It is an improbable spot for anybody's idea of nirvana but, tucked far out of sight among the pine-covered hills way south of Nelson, they might have found it.
Well, nirvana is overdoing it slightly, but it isn't unreasonable to say that it could be the answer to more than a few fervent hopes and prayers: a possible new home for Nelson's large but increasingly nomadic motorsport community.
For years - decades, probably - somebody or another has been talking about the need for such a place: a single, central home for the bewildering array of clubs from across Nelson that race and show off any kind of overpowered vehicle you care to think of: hot rods, dragsters, dirt bikes, track bikes, karts, street cars, classic cars, V8s, Targas. Somewhere they can gather in peace - the kind which, it seems, can be found only when the rest of civilisation is far away and out of earshot.
But really, it has been all talk and precious little progress. Until, perhaps, now.
Increasingly, motorsport enthusiasts are finding themselves under pressure - being chased out of this area, challenged about being in that place, told they're not welcome over there. The chances to do their thing are fewer and farther apart as it gets harder to close public roads for private activities, and as the countryside fills with weekend farmers who don't want to share their neighbourhoods with the infernal racket of internal combustion.
Things seemed to be sorting themselves out three years ago or so, when the Tasman District Council - faced with controversy after controversy involving motorsports and unhappy neighbours - got all the clubs together and suggested they pool their energy and resources to try to find a base.
The Motor Sport On Track group was formed, but the initial flush of enthusiasm has given way to different people pushing different ideas about what's needed, and the whole thing drifting along. Meanwhile, the pressure on established clubs has continued.
Just how serious it is getting is highlighted by the plight of one of the bigger groups, the Nelson Drag Racing Association, which is fighting to keep using the Motueka aerodrome for its meetings four times a year.
Over the past 15 years, the drag racers have built their sport to the point where those gatherings are invariably the biggest show in town - crowds of 3000-plus are not unknown. But with some other airport users grizzling about the disruption, and the association's permission to use the airstrip expiring at the end of the year, the drag racers are faced with going through a public hearing to decide whether they can stay.
They know that their future in Motueka is uncertain. "We're finding it tough, " says the association's John Gourdie.
It's taken a couple of Nelson businessmen to bring things to a head - Garry Adcock and Gary Donaldson, business partners in the contracting firm Adcock and Donaldson, who have a shared passion for motorsport and a clear idea of how to finally find a way out of the scene's rather forlorn search for somewhere to call home.
Adcock has been involved with motorsport since he was a teenager, and his memories of somebody talking of developing a sealed racing circuit somewhere in the top of the south go back just as far.
Loads of sites have been talked about but invariably come up short for whatever reason - maybe because the land is not big or flat enough, or is unaffordable for amateur sports clubs, or because the neighbours have kicked up an uproar when they've discovered that the petrolheads are looking at moving in.
What Adcock and Donaldson came to recognise was that if the much talked-about motorsport park was to move beyond the talkshop, it would need to be at a site far enough from the outside world to annoy no one, in an environment unlikely to ever be surrounded by subdivisions or lifestyle blocks, on land whose owners were sufficiently sympathetic to the needs of motorsport that they might be prepared to cut a deal that wouldn't be impossible for the clubs to bear.
Nirvana, perhaps, but the two men knew of just the place: a beef farm they happen to own down in the wilds of Stanley Brook, in the hills between Kohatu and Tapawera, surrounded by forest - and not a hobby farm in sight - with 200-plus hectares of flats stretching up the valley floor.
Donaldson had already developed some tracks to pursue his enthusiasm for motocross riding with his mates. Looking around, they could see much bigger potential.
"It's a perfect little valley, " says Adcock. "It's nice and closed, it's away from everyone." And, given their enthusiasm for motorsport, they were prepared to make it available for a motorsport development on favourable terms.
The Tasman council agreed to stump up $15,000 to allow for a closer assessment of Adcock's and Donaldson's idea. Project management company Project Fusion took on the job of exploring the possibilities. Late last month, it delivered its findings to the council and other interested parties.
Its conclusion: it may not be the dream site of every Nelson petrolhead, given how far it is from town, but its potential is good; it should be possible to steer through the maze of the resource consent process; there are no obvious insurmountable obstacles; and it's the best anybody has yet come up with to make the project finally happen.
As Adcock and Project Fusion director Rob Morris readily acknowledge, they have thought big, but they are cautious about not letting the grand vision frighten off those who browse the plan.
The extent of what they say could eventually be developed - and the price tag - is startling. They talk of a drag strip, a sealed racing circuit offering as many as eight configurations and built to international specifications, off-road tracks for bikes, buggies and 4WDs, a 1.2km kart racing track, a jetski lake, and maybe even, eventually, a new dirt track speedway, if the existing speedway ever decides it needs to move away from Appleby. It could include mountainbike tracks and walkways in the surrounding hills, and accommodation for corporate events. The police or car companies might use it for driver training and vehicle testing.
The estimated price tag of all that - $26 million on Project Fusion's initial costings - might make even a Formula One billionaire balk, but Morris's crucial point about the Stanley Brook idea is that it would happen gradually, in stages, as the supporting clubs and organisations are ready to make the move. It could take 20 years for all the possibilities to be realised.
Presuming the project can be steered beyond the "nice idea" stage and through the resource consent process, some bits could be done early and easily - the off-road tracks for dirt riders and the like. Adcock is confident a drag strip could be laid down quickly and easily, too, and Gourdie says that from his conversations with Adcock and Donaldson, it could be done for an achievable sum as far as the drag racing association is concerned.
Once a sealed return road is put in place alongside the dragstrip, a basic circuit will have been created for racing, and the platform for growth will be there.
But who will pay, whether one million or 26? The idea is to first set up a trust of the various clubs and interested others, to steer the project through the consent process and get it off the ground; and a company, to run it and be the vehicle for financial backers, who will receive shares in the venture in return for whatever money they put in. That's the theory, anyway. For now, the whole thing is rather pregnantly sitting out there, waiting for somebody to make the next move.
The picture has been confused lately, mainly with some talk that Rabbit Island is a better site, being closer to Nelson. That idea doesn't seem to be in danger of getting any serious traction behind it. Even though it has been suggested under the auspices of the remnants of On Track, one of the group's spokesmen and committee members, John Dobbe of Upper Moutere, doesn't see it as realistic.
Dobbe reckons the best hope was a site known as Boiler Gully, north of Nelson - only 20 minutes from town but completely away from the public. But he angrily blames the Tasman council for failing to give the motorsport clubs the sort of support that could have seen them do a deal for the site.
Now, Dobbe concedes that "private enterprise", as he sees the Adcock and Donaldson proposal, probably holds the best hope. He's not against the Stanley Brook plan - his main reservation is that it is a long way from town - but he reckons that if the motorsport groups had got some meaningful help from the council to start with, they could be on the way to developing the facility now.
Tasman District Council community services manager Lloyd Kennedy says the council has been sent the study into the Stanley Brook site but hasn't discussed it.
His own view? "I thought they covered the ground pretty well. Obviously, it's big dollars to do everything they've talked about, but if you've got a plan that you work towards over, it might even be 20 years, it's got its possibilities."
But the council won't be doing anything until it hears back from the project's backers about what they plan to do next. It has set aside $600,000 in its long-term budgets to contribute to such a park, but Kennedy says the figure was plucked out of the air, really just to acknowledge that the council is conscious of the demand for such a development, and the arguments it will inevitably face to contribute.
Morris says much now depends on how the key motorsport clubs can come together and decide whether they want to be part of the project.
"We feel we've got something here now that can work, so we've got to get our skates on and get this thing going."
Adcock and Morris are convinced that a vast store of enthusiasm and goodwill is out there among clubs big and small - as well as individual motorsport fans - waiting for somebody to come up with a firm plan.
"That gives us the confidence, " says Morris, "that if we build it, they will come."