The NSW government’s plans to bulldoze the Sydney Speedway in Granville to make way for a new rail project has the motorsport community fired up.
Over 21,000 signatures have been made to a Change.org petition to find another way, as Valvoline Raceway joins the list of 116 private and business properties to be acquired and demolished to make room for the Sydney Metro between Paramatta and the CBD.
Like a carbon copy of The Castle script, Souad and Gebran Kassis are among the private residents who’ve been told to move from their family home of nearly half a century, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Sydney Speedway has been the meeting place for petrolheads since the late 1970s, but transport minister Andrew Constance, who is also the local member for Bega, said in a press release on Monday the Speedway land would be acquired in 2021 with a new speedway built to replace it.
“The project team has today (Tuesday, October 21) started informing affected property owners and tenants,” the statement reads.
“The preference is always to reach a commercial agreement, with compulsory acquisition a last resort,” it continues.
The department says Sydney Olympic Park, “which is visited by more than 10 million people each year would get a second railway station “within walking distance of ANZ Stadium” and says the project would reinforce the area’s “status as Australia’s premier events, sporting and entertainment precinct”.
The racing community in the Hunter Valley electorate are being asked by the Speedway to appeal to the local member Michael Johnsen to fight the development; the racing fraternity will also get the opportunity to provide further feedback as part of the statutory planning assessment process, to be administered by the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment.
Constance says the metro would “create approximately 10,000 direct and 70,000 indirect jobs”.
Speedway announcer Wade Aunger told fans on Tuesday night that “Being angry isn’t going to be enough”.
“We’ve got to stay positive, we aren’t giving up on this, we need to be vigilant…We’re not going to walk away from this,” he says.
Newcastle Speedway was demolished in 2002 with promise of a replacement track, which never eventuated, leaving racers and fans to take their racing to Sydney Speedway.
Alana Baines, daughter of the Speedway’s founder Sid Hopping, says her dad poured his heart into establishing the venue and the sport in Sydney back in 1976.
“My dad started on his dream to build a speedway track for Sprintcar racing in Sydney at the then called Granville/Clyde Showgrounds and went on to promote, along with Bert Wilder, until 1987,” she says on Change.org.
“Since then the track now know as Valvoline Raceway has been the home track for over 10 different racing divisions and now the only track in the Sydney metro area after we lost Sydney Showgrounds and Liverpool City Raceway,” Baines explains.
“Mot too mention other tracks were closed due to development – Don’t make Speedway racing non existent in Sydney,” she appeals to the state government.
Another Speedway enthusiast says “they said the same thing in WA with Claremont”, now known as Perth Motorplex.
“Kwinana is no where near the same (as the old Claremont Speedway),” he says.
“Fight this and let them bend the rail around the speedway – it may even benefit the speedway by making it more accessible to a larger crowd,” Quinn suggests.
One young race fan said over the venue loudspeaker at a rally on Tuesday night, “You would not put a train line in a church.”
“To you it might just be a bit of dirt and concrete… but to us it’s more than that; it’s a place of worship, this bit of dirt is sacred to us,” she pleaded.
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