THUNDER BAY—With the racing season just over a month away, work continues at the Thunder City Speedway to complete a full-service racetrack facility.
This year, 25 new cars have registered to race at the track, and Norm Nadin, the track's developer, estimates more than 150 cars will be racing this season.
"That is probably double any other racetrack in North America," he said. "It just shows you that there's racing in Thunder Bay's blood for sure."
Nadin travelled to race conferences in Minneapolis and Arizona and said people "know about Thunder City." With increasing numbers of U.S. racers visiting the track, he says one of the challenges is the commute.
"For most of them, coming to Thunder Bay is a seven—or eight-hour drive, and then they try to get back home to go to work the next day," he said. That's always a challenge," he added, adding that little by little, Thunder Bay racing is catching on and growing.
"Last fall, we had 15 U.S. drivers show up, and we were pretty happy about that."
Nadin says the visitors coming to the city for racing bring families and friends, which impacts the tourism sector and businesses.
"They have to buy gas and food, and there has been an (economic) impact. It's something I would like to see the city support us a little bit more on," he said.
Some racers seek accommodation in local hotels but most of them opt to camp on-site in recreational vehicles at the race track.
"We're seeing more people show up with campers and trailers and they like to be right on site," Nadin said. "We have packages for those people if they want to camp there. We're still expanding the (camping) area but we're not quite there yet."
He added they could have full electrical and plumbing infrastructure to accommodate campers in about three years.
The expansion of the parking lot is an ongoing project that continues to evolve. Nadin explained that they currently have people parking out on the highway but want to try to move away from that.
"We have a big area of about 15 acres off the track, and we have a little trolley service for the older people or those impacted by walking that distance," he said. "We commute them from the parking area to the racetrack, which is working out very well."
The stands have a 4,000-person capacity, which Nadin said is almost filled every Wednesday night. With the crowd, concessions are needed.
They made a deal with some of the vendors from the opening of the racetrack, which includes the availability of ice-cream hot dogs, fries, cotton candy, popcorn and other fast-food items.
Nadin says the deal with the vendors will continue for the next three to four years.
Their game plan is to build one big pavilion where everybody will be housed in one building, he noted.
"The reason for that is we want to look at hosting snowmobile racing in the winter and you need something where people could go in and get warm," he said. "For now, we have an agreement with the vendors who pay a fee each Wednesday to come out and sell their products, and it's working great. There are vendors who are fighting to try to come in, but we don't want to saturate that."
Open practice begins on May 15 with the first race day set for May 22.
The Chronicle Journal / Local Journalism Initiative
