SEE THE NOTE IN THIS FILE'S SOURCE.
Nowhere to ride
but the road
Colorado's deadliest year on record
I ride a 2012 Yamaha R6. The closest real racetrack is a two hour round trip and a day there costs $250 to $345, which is more than most people I ride with can justify. So they ride hard on the canyon roads instead. I have lost friends that way.
Colorado lost 165 riders in 2024. Not a bad month, not a rounding error, the highest number the state has ever recorded, on a trend that has been climbing for a decade. Motorcyclists are about 3 percent of the vehicles on Colorado roads and about 24 percent of the people who die on them.
SOURCE · COLORADO DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, 2025 AND 2026 RELEASES
Riders who want to find the limit will find it somewhere. Right now the only options around here are Rist Canyon, the Poudre and Highway 14, which have oncoming traffic, gravel, deer and no runoff. A racetrack has corner workers, an ambulance already parked on site, and nothing to hit but air fence.
wanting to go fast. You can give
them somewhere to do it that
does not kill them.
And nowhere to drag race either
When Bandimere Speedway closed at the end of 2023, the Front Range lost its only major drag strip. Nobody stopped drag racing. It moved onto public roads. Stunt riders face the same choice: an empty parking lot and a reckless driving charge, or nothing.
Tracks make their regions money
A safety argument alone does not get a facility built. It does not have to, because this is one of the rare civic projects where the public benefit and the private return come out of the same asset.
Two American regions with no racing history to speak of built serious circuits, and both got paid for it.
SOURCES · ALABAMA NEWS CENTER 2015 · CIRCUIT OF THE AMERICAS VIA THE URBAN LAND INSTITUTE
What Fort Collins gets
Property and sales tax on 640 acres currently taxed at agricultural rates. Around 37 permanent jobs once it stabilizes, plus tenants and service staff. Two to three years of construction work. And a reason for people from Cheyenne, Denver and Nebraska to book hotel rooms on weekends that are currently quiet.
What investors get
An operating business doing roughly $9 million a year with about $1.9 million of EBITDA, across fourteen revenue lines so no single one sinks it. Under that, 640 acres of appreciating land in the I-25 corridor bought at agricultural prices. And naming rights before there is a reputation to price in.
The number I am not hiding
I checked my own model against how motorsports facilities actually perform, and it did not survive. My first version assumed a 37 percent margin. The published benchmark for this sector is about 18 percent, and the largest listed comparable runs lower than that. My sponsorship line was roughly three times what a facility this size earns. Corrected, the operating profit is about $1.9 million, not $4.3 million.
Worse, a $150 million facility depreciates by roughly $6.8 million a year. It wears out faster than it earns. At that build cost this does not work as a private investment, and no honest model says otherwise.
A smaller circuit, built to national rather than international standard on land shaped so it can be upgraded later, does clear the bar. That is the version I am now proposing, and it is the path Barber and PittRace both took. The full analysis, including the failed version, is published so you can check it yourself.
There is a cheaper argument too, and it is the one for the state. Colorado already spends money on motorcycle safety campaigns. A facility that puts 1,200 riders a year through structured schooling, and that can take speeding and stunt citations as diversion into track school instead of fines, is a safety program that generates tax revenue instead of consuming it.
What we are asking to build
A permanent road course of about three and a half miles, built to international standards from the start rather than built cheap and upgraded later.
That last part matters more than it sounds. Utah's Miller Motorsports Park spent around $100 million all at once, could not sustain it, and eventually sold for $18.5 million. Barber and PittRace grew in stages and are still here. So the racing surface gets built properly once, because you cannot cheaply upgrade a racing surface afterwards, and everything else arrives as it is earned.
Pricing is the whole point
A track that costs $345 a day does not solve the problem I am describing. It moves the problem to people with more money. So the price is tiered by where you live, and Fort Collins residents pay the least by a wide margin.
Why the tiers matter to the city, not just to riders
A Fort Collins address saves a regular rider about $3,400 a year against the out-of-state rate. That is a real, quantifiable reason to establish residency here rather than in Loveland or Cheyenne, and it is the kind of amenity a city can point to when it competes for people and the tax base that comes with them. Municipal golf courses, rec centers and state park passes all price this way already, so the mechanism is well understood and legally ordinary.
It also answers the obvious investor question. The local discount is not charity taken out of returns. It is funded by visitors from Denver, Wyoming, Nebraska and out of state, who pay market rate and also fill hotel rooms while they are here. Cheap for locals and profitable are the same strategy, not competing ones.
The schools
Colorado State, Front Range Community College and Aims all run programs that would benefit from a working facility: engineering, motorsports business, and mechanic certification with paying customers in the bays. Students graduate with a real venue on their résumé.
The land
The circuit needs about half of a 640 acre site. The rest can be restored shortgrass prairie, with noise berms doubling as spectator hills. A fixed percentage of revenue to Colorado conservation groups, written in before ground breaks.
What does not exist yet
Every number on this page is an estimate, and you should hear that from me rather than find it out yourself.
- No land. No site optioned or purchased. Acreage and cost figures come from agricultural listings east of I-25, roughly $8,000 to $24,000 an acre.
- No legal entity. Nothing incorporated, so no money is being collected. Signing below costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
- No feasibility study. The real next step, and it costs $250,000 to $500,000. Every serious funder asks for one first, and every figure here defers to it.
- The financial model is mine, not an accountant's. Published in full so anyone can check the assumptions and tell me where they are wrong. I would like to know.
- No insurance quote, no noise study, no traffic study. The three things that kill track proposals at county hearings, and they need doing early.
- No name. The one at the top is a working title. Naming it before it exists felt like getting ahead of ourselves.
If that list makes this sound early, it is early. Which is exactly why signatures matter more right now than money does.
Put your name on it
City councils and investors ask the same question first: does anybody actually want this?
A list of ten thousand named Northern Colorado residents answers that in a way no argument can. No payment, no commitment, and the list will not be sold or shared.
If you work for the city, county, state or a company here
The ask at this stage is not a check. It is help funding a feasibility study, or a letter saying this deserves examination. Both are worth more right now than money, because they unlock everything else. I am at karldu45@gmail.com and I will meet anyone anywhere.