Photo courtesy Miller Motorsport Park.
Since opening in 2006, Miller Motorsports Park in Tooele, Utah, has hosted Rolex Sports Car Series, NASCAR, American Le Mans Series and AMA Superbike events and serves as the home of Ford’s Racing School, but last May the Larry H. Miller Group announced it was getting out of the motorsport business. That left Tooele County as the track owner, making the prospect of continued operations look bleak. On August 18, the future of racing in the Beehive State got a bit brighter with the announcement that a subsidiary of China’s Geely Group had purchased the facility for a reported $20 million.
The track was the dream of Larry H. Miller, who initially planned on spending $5 million of his own money to build a private test track in the Utah desert. With encouragement from auto industry contacts and local motorcycle racers, the project soon grew into a world-class motorsport park, with a track designed by Alan Wilson and a final tab estimated to be $85 million. Larry H. Milled died in 2009, and since then the track has been run as one of the family’s vast business holdings (which also include a string of successful automobile dealerships across the Western U.S., the Utah Jazz and the Energy Solutions Arena).
The 500-plus acres occupied by the track were leased, not owned, so when the Larry H. Miller Group notified Tooele County that it would not be renewing its lease, ownership of the property fell to the county. Not interested in operating the park on its own, Tooele County solicited proposals to sell the facility and several entities reportedly bid on the business. In the end it was Geely subsidiary Mitime Investment and Development Group that submitted the winning proposal, in a deal reportedly brokered by Alan Wilson.
That’s good news for the track’s 90 employees, who will retain their jobs under the new ownership. Plans are already in place to expand the facility with an oval test track, a drag strip and onsite housing for guests and customers. As Wilson explained to the Salt Lake Tribune, the facility is ideal for long-term driver training, and additional programs appear to be in the works.
The purchase is good news for Tooele County in more ways than one. One study estimated that ongoing operations will bring $1 billion to the local economy over the next 25 years.
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