NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Cheers filled Metro Nashville's Courthouse on Friday as Restore Our Fairgrounds turned in boxes containing nearly 15,000 pages and 74,905 signatures, far outpacing the 40,193 needed to put the fate of racing at the fairgrounds speedway before voters next August.
WATCH: Petition to end racing at Fairgrounds Speedway collects nearly 75K signatures
Group co-founder Mike Kopp praised canvassers for braving historic heat as part of what he called "the largest citizen-led ballot measure in the city and state's history."
"To put this into perspective, our petition contains more signatures than the total number of people who voted on the previous fairground referendum back in 2011," Kopp said.
Voters approved a local referendum in 2011 to include racing as a protected use of the fairgrounds, but races have been few and far between since then. It's been more than 40 years since the last NASCAR Cup Series race at the track, but renewed interest from the company and race fans in recent years has Kopp and others concerned about a potential return to larger races.
Their new vision would replace racing as a protected use with affordable housing and green space.
Opponents of the effort have launched websites claiming to inform the public about what signing the petition means. Others hired attorneys and successfully had a prior petition thrown out by the courts for being too vaguely written.
Nashville native’s Houston Shumate and Ryan Schimmel said they aren’t affiliated with the opposition group Decline to Sign, but showed up with their signs anyway.
“We’re out here because we’re passionate,” Schimmel said.”
“My father took me when I was a child. I have an eight-year-old daughter. I take my daughter. I take my niece. I just love racing. I love Nashville and I love Nashville's history. I don’t want to see that history erased,” Shumate said.
Shumate and Schimmel say they are convinced the motivations behind Restore Our Fairgrounds have less to do with Nashville and more to do with the billionaire who owns the soccer stadium next door.
"If affordable housing was part of the problem over at the fairgrounds, John Ingram would have used the plaza that he built to put affordable housing in the first place," Schimmel said.
"My personal opinion is that the soccer stadium doesn't want competition next door. That's what I think it comes down to at the end of the day," Shumate said.
Neither side of the debate has been shy about pointing out the billionaire they believe is financing their opposition. John Spragens, co-founder of Citizens Against Racetrack Expansion, said he is convinced that billionaire Marcus Smith of Speedway Motorsports is the driving force behind the Decline to Sign movement.
“You know there was almost no scrutiny put on that movement this summer, but the fact is — that’s Marcus Smith, the out-of-state racetrack billionaire funding the Calvert Street group that’s long tried to help him take over the racetrack in Nashville,” Spragens said.
All sides say they are willing to let the democratic process play out at the polls, but Schimmel and Shumate say they are worried people across Nashville were misled into signing the petition.
“Some of the videos were fake. We can’t verify all of those claims,” Heidi Basgall Favorite, co-founder of Neighbors Opposing Track Expansion (NOTE).
Spragens said Decline to Sign handed over more than 1,000 names of people who wanted to be removed from the petition.
"Some of those requests were real and we honored every single one of them that we could verify, but the rest of them weren't verifiable. It was just another tactic. Just another trick," Spragens said.
Spragens said they managed to remove less than one percent of the signatures collected.
The election commission will take the next month to verify the remaining signatures and if certified, the Fairgrounds Racetrack Speedway will once again be on a ballot for the Nashville to decide.
