By Patrick Crowley
The Cincinnati Enquirer

A new hotel is under construction at Interstate 71 and Ky. 35 in Gallatin County, within sight of the Kentucky Speedway. (Patrick Reddy photo) | ZOOM |

SPARTA, Ky. - It's the largest outdoor entertainment venue in the Tristate, and it's doing fast laps.

Opening its fourth season today, the $152 million, 70,000-seat Kentucky Speedway is becoming the major landmark envisioned when it was farmland spread across 1,000 acres of Gallatin County countryside:

• On a sell-out day with 70,000 people, tiny Sparta, population 199, becomes Kentucky's third-largest city, behind Lexington and Louisville.

• Total Kentucky Speedway attendance has grown each season, while total season attendance figures for the Cincinnati Reds and the Bengals have dropped each year.

• More than $50 million has been invested by Kentucky into improving roads for access to the speedway. Work was put on the fast track following a monster 21-mile traffic jam on the first night of racing in June 2000.

• Gallatin County, which grew by 45.9 percent during the 1990s, has a population of 7,870, making it the third-fastest growing county in Kentucky, according to the Census Bureau. Some say the speedway is a magnet for some new residents.

• All four of the speedway's signature races - ARCA, NASCAR Truck, Busch and Indy Racing League - have attracted major corporate sponsorships in a lean sponsorship market.

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• Speedway attendance on the rise

"There is a lot of buzz all around motorsports about Kentucky Speedway," said racing announcer Benny Parsons, a former champion driver who will call Saturday night's Channel 5-205 ARCA Remax race on WLTV in Cincinnati.

"And the buzz is good."

Conceived and developed by Fort Mitchell developer Jerry Carroll, the 1.5-mile oval speedway 35 miles southwest of downtown Cincinnati has changed the landscape of this mostly rural community.

For the first time, Gallatin County had to put in zoning - not change zoning, but establish it.

Everyday life in Kentucky's smallest county by size - 99 square miles - is pretty much the same as it was when cows roamed and tobacco grew where the speedway now stands. But the massive facility at the interchange of Interstate 71 and Ky. 35 is a very different crop.

Making hay 4 weekends a year

Louisville developer Ray Patenaude is building a $4 million, 78-room Ramada Limited Suites hotel across Ky. 35 from the speedway's entrance. It's set to open by July.

With just four current racing weekends a year and a couple of concerts in the summer, speedway crowds are not going to give Patenaude's hotel enough business.

But what the speedway has done is make the I-71/Ky. 35 interchange a destination stop for travelers on the interstate trek between Cincinnati and Louisville.

"Just look at all the traffic going north and south right past this interchange every day," said Patenaude, president of Fidelity International Contractors in Louisville.

"There are new stores and gas stations at this highway exit. The growth is just going to keep coming, and the speedway is helping bring it here."

If the business at the Ramada is good, Patenaude is planning to also build an Extended Stay America suite hotel.

"The suites will be good for those racing weekends," he said. "I've already had one driver and his crew looking for 20 rooms for a week, but we're not ready to open yet."

Down Ky. 35 from the speedway in the picturesque Gallatin County seat of Warsaw, the growth is tangible on U.S. 42, the main road through this Ohio River town.

"We have traffic jams now," said Winslow Baker, the county's zoning administrator. "That never used to happen. And that's not all because of the speedway. It's because we're growing overall. People are looking to get out of the suburbs and bigger towns and move down to the country. But sometimes it doesn't feel like the country down here anymore."

Since May 2002, when county officials began using zoning codes, 150 building permits for new homes have been granted. That's a 4.4 percent increase in the county's 3,362 housing units recorded in the 2000 Census.

Even more growth is predicted when the state completes a $35.8 million road project from I-71 south of the speedway to the Markland Dam bridge across the Ohio River. That bridge leads directly to the Belterra Casino in Switzerland County, Ind.

That project includes a $12.3 million interstate interchange that will provide a second major access route into the speedway.

The anticipation of growth is manifest in the dozen or so "land for sale" signs around the speedway.

Don Erler, a broker with the Louisville office of Remax Commercial, has a listing of $695,000 for 3 acres of commercial property across from the speedway.

By comparison Carroll's investment group paid about $8 million - or $8,000 an acre - for the 1,000-acre farm where the speedway now stands.

"There's no question that this place is on the map now because of the Kentucky Speedway," Erler said. "The money Jerry Carroll has spent is creating a landmark here and with the relative proximity to Cincinnati, this has the potential to become the next major interchange on I-71."

"It's going to develop slowly, one project at a time, because it is a new area for growth and people are going to have to take a chance like Jerry Carroll did and invest down there," Erler said. "It make take five or six years, but in time this place will be booming."

Jerry Carroll's obsession

Carroll, 58, is a native of Aurora, Ind. He made millions developing real estate in Nashville during the 1970s and 1980s. He returned to Greater Cincinnati in the early 1980s and continued developing property, mostly in Northern Kentucky. In 1984 he purchased the rundown Latonia racetrack in Florence, renamed it Turfway Park and built it into a flourishing track.

After selling the track in 1999, Carroll put together a group of investors that contributed $20 million to get planning and construction started at the speedway.

"These are all entrepreneurial people who have built companies from scratch," Carroll said of the investment team. "They don't even think about failing. And I include myself in that."

His next goal is a Winston Cup race.

"I'm obsessed with getting a Winston Cup race," said Carroll, now of Fort Mitchell, where the speedway maintains its ticket office.

That would put a race at the Kentucky Speedway in the class of the Brickyard 400, the Pocono 500 and the Winston Cup's premier race, the Daytona 500.

"It's a nice track," said NASCAR President Mike Helton said. "You start with the ambiance. It looks like a modern facility. Jerry (Carroll) and his guys have worked hard to get the surface right. They have all the amenities to host an event. Kentucky Speedway has done very well.

"But Jerry knew before he broke ground ... that we would not take a racing date away from another track just to move a race to Kentucky," Helton said.

A fan's eye view

Racing fans enjoy the track, but just like Carroll, what they truly desire is a Winston Cup race.

Just a few miles south of the speedway at Red's Tavern in Sparta, NASCAR posters and advertisements cover one wall and the TV plays Country Music Television. Bartender Wendford Helton wiles away a slow afternoon wiping down the bar and talking racing.

"People down here are NASCAR fans, and they love the track," said Helton, 32, of neighboring Owen County. "And a lot of them go to the speedway now, but they'll really get excited when they get a Winston Cup race. That's what everybody is waiting for."

E-mail pcrowley@enquirer.com