The sale of Utah Motorsports Campus by Tooele County (Utah) to Mitime Investment Utah has closed.
What started in 2015 when original developer/owner/operator Larry H. Miller Group declined to renew its lease on the 511-acre motorsports facility formerly known as Miller Motorsports Park and by default handed the racetrack over to Tooele County has crossed the finish line.
“Yes, I am confirming it,” Tooele County Commissioner Shawn Milne told Roadracingworld.com December 31. “We signed documents last Wednesday [December 26]. The title was recorded last Thursday [December 27]. The money changed hands on Friday [December 28]. We disclosed it today because we wanted to make sure everything went through.”
The reason for the extra caution was after navigating a host of legal challenges over the last three years, Tooele County’s sale of Utah Motorsports Campus faced another last-minute threat from Utah State Representative Douglas Sagers (R-Dist. 21) representing Tooele County.
“There are several different agencies looking at this,” Sagers said in a video interview with a Salt Lake City TV news crew. “I’m not able to say who or what, but the gramma request if they deny this then I’ll issue a subpoena. And hopefully that’ll be enough for the court to stop the sale until this is resolved.”
Roadracingworld.com made several attempts to contact Rep. Sagers to ask about his specific concerns with the sale, but neither Sagers nor anyone from his office responded prior to post time.
In the meantime, Milne is in the mood to celebrate, and not just because it’s New Year’s Day.
“It’s been a hell of a ride!” said Milne. “We are very, very pleased. I am happy to have done this for the benefit of my community [and] the stakeholders. Three and a half years ago I looked them in the face, some of them having moved here from out of state to be closer to this favorite track of theirs, and said that we would do everything we could to keep it open as a racing venue. And here we are able to say that today we’ve been able to do just that.”
Mitime Investment Utah has publicly stated from the beginning that not only does it plan to continue operating Utah Motorsports Campus (UMC) as a motorsports facility and continue hosting of race events, it also plans to expand the facility, potentially add a racecar manufacturing operation and on-site hotel, and promote tourism of Utah in China.
“We believe UMC and the parent company, Geely, to be the right company,” said Milne. “They clearly have the business acumen. They have the global reach. They have the liquidity to make this kind of investment. We believe that this company has the moxy to make Larry H. Miller’s original vision come to fruition. I’m very, very happy about that.”
Mitime Utah Investment originally offered to buy the racetrack for $20 million, a bid Tooele County accepted in 2015, but Andrew Cartwright, of Center Point Management, sued Tooele County because the county did not select his higher bid of approximately $22.5 million.
Center Point Management’s proposal called for operating the racetrack with a country club-style business model while adding residences throughout the property.
Cartwright’s lawsuit vacated the original sale of the property, kicking off three years of litigation and leading to an eventual settlement in which Tooele County essentially paid Cartwright $1.55 million to go away and not interfere with the sale anymore.
During the prolonged litigation, Tooele County hired Mitime Investment Utah to operate UMC on its behalf so the racetrack would not lose its value and equity in the motorsports community.
As a result, of the final $18.5 million sale price, Tooele County only netted $9.2 million after Mitime’s management fee, operating losses, and other expenses were paid. But Milne feels the investment was well worth it.
“We know [the economic impact is] literally millions of dollars every year to the local economy,” said Milne, “which, even if it sounds a little bit like patting ourselves on the back, it is the very reason why we were willing to eat away our net proceeds at the end of the day in order to make sure the facility stayed open and operational. And what we’re really pleased with is we know that not only did they stay open and operational, every year they built upon what they had done [financially] the year previous.”