A new racetrack under development in Southern California is one step away from breaking ground and is already scheduling track days and motorcycle road races for 2009. Chuckwalla Valley Raceway is a multi-track racing complex being developed on 400 acres located just off Interstate 10, one hour east of Palm Springs, California and three hours east of Los Angeles. The development is being led by Micky Grana, President and Co-Founder of the development and the owner of track day provider So Cal Track Days. “We kind of plugged away at this thing and did our groundwork behind the scenes,” Grana told Roadracingworld.com Tuesday. “We’ve got real strong ties with the [Riverside] county. We bought the property from the Economic Development Agency of Riverside County, so they are really supportive of us getting it done. “They helped us get through the channels of where we needed to go. When we finally submitted to get our zoning hearings, the guys came back with, ‘Exactly what you guys are building is exactly what this land was zoned for. You guys don’t have to do any rezoning hearings.’ That ramped us up quite a bit. And we had a lot of the environmental stuff done because we bought it from the county with a full environmental report. We have one study left to do in March and then we’re breaking ground.” That study is to check the land for the Desert Tortoise, a threatened species native to the Mojave Desert. “If they happen to find any, which we’re told they shouldn’t find anything from the last reports, we have about 800 acres to mitigate anything they find out there,” said Grana. “We have 1168 acres, and we’re only developing 400. If we happen to find anything, they told us to go create a habitat on another piece of the land and go about our project. So that’s the only reason we’re waiting to break ground to put a damper on anybody who might pop their head up and say, ‘Wait, you guys didn’t do a study’ and try to put an injunction against us or stop us. We were going to break ground in January, but we put it off. We’ll do a 36-day study in March, and then we’re ready to break ground.” And as far as noise goes, studies show the track will be well within regulations and the track’s only two neighbors have pledged their support to the project. Government-owned land borders most of the property. Phase One of the multi-phase project is the construction of an Ed Bargy-designed 2.68-mile-long, 36-foot-wide road course (that can be run in both directions), an administration/timing & scoring building and a 300,000-square-foot (just under seven acres) paved paddock. Eventually, the project will have a 196-acre paddock with RV hook-ups, long-term and day garages, a clubhouse, fueling facilities and two additional racetracks. “We engineered it [racetrack] and laid it out to be safe for the motorcycle rider and made it wide enough and user-friendly for the cars, which is different than a lot of tracks,” said Grana. “A lot of tracks look at it for the cars first, because the tracks think the car base is where they’re generating all their money. But I have 32 days requested on my calendar from September to December [2009] and only two of those days are cars. The rest are WERA, CCS, Fastrack, Take It 2 The Track, us, the list goes on and on.” As far as money goes, Grana said the project’s financing is very secure. “The first phase will cost right about $5 million, including all of our permits and everything,” said Grana. “We’ve got it. We’re self-financed. We put up $1 million of our own money and the bank that we do a lot of business with loaned us another $4 million. My partners, they have the liquid assets to cover it if they have to. My partners are real strong. So lending someone $4 million when they have $50 million in the bank isn’t really a big deal.” For more information, go to www.chuckwallavalleyraceway.com.