I’ve seen it — speedway saved my town

Seeing all of that open land around the area and that gorgeous raceway a sense of deja vu overtook me. I have seen firsthand the effect that having a state of the art raceway in your own backyard can do for a city and the local economy.

When I was growing up in Kansas City, Kan., our city had nothing. A city with a population of more than 100,000 people, adjacent to Kansas City, Mo., had absolutely nothing going for its self.

The one mall in town died off after gang violence. When that mall went away our movie theater closed, then all of the restaurants in the area left. With the destabilization in our local economy, our crime rate skyrocketed throughout the 1990s. To many people, “KCK” was considered an unsafe place.

That reputation for crime still haunts the city to this day despite the fact that the violent crime rate has dropped off nearly 50 percent in the city since 1990. The city’s violent reputation is more bark than bite these days. And while KCK isn’t quite the place you would leave your doors unlocked at night its not a bad place to live at all.

The primary catalyst in our crime going down is the Kansas Speedway. Our speedway was the dream of our then Mayor Carol Marinovich. Her dream was that the speedway would turn a bunch of empty fields in Western Wyandotte County into the biggest tourist attraction in Kansas.

While it started out slow her vision for our city eventually came to fruition and now the Legends/Village West area is the top tourist destination in Kansas and one of the primary retail spots in all of Kansas City — a place that is littered with shopping centers.

Our speedway saved our city. It created jobs, it brought in more money for our town, and gave our city an identity other than being the “other” Kansas City. The addition to the speedway led to KCK getting the first brand new grocery store built in 30 years in the inner-city.