Review staff
The Alberta government has made a substantial contribution towards the expansion of the Central Alberta Raceways located at the Rimbey Kinsmen Motorsports Park.
On Monday evening Lacombe-Ponoka MLA Ray Prins presented a cheque in the amount of $430,000 to Jeff Makofka, president of the Rimbey Kinsmen Club to complete the drag strip portion of the park.
“Whether it’s on the snow or on the track, racing is a sport enjoyed by Albertans all year round,” said Hector Goudreau, Minister of Tourism, Parks, Recreation and Culture. “We are pleased to support a project that will provide thrills and excitement for local spectators and visitors from around the world.”
Began in 2003, the Central Alberta Raceway in Rimbey hosts a number of racing events each year and attracts more than 15,000 racers and racing fans from across the province and throughout western Canada, to the facility.
The $430,000 grant will be put towards the expansion of the racing venue and the completion of construction of a new paved track. The total cost of the project is estimated to be $869,000 and is part of a long-range development plan which is expected to make the Rimbey facility a premier multi-motor sport-racing venue in western Canada.
“This new track is estimated to be one of the longest paved drag racing tracks in Alberta,” Prins said in presenting the cheque. “We hope this expansion will help draw more than double the number of people that come to the raceways each year.”
“Our community project will now get into high gear, the community support has been outstanding and with these new funds, we can proceed with the completion of our drag strip,” Makofka said in accepting the cheque.
According to Mayor Dale Barr, the financial support of the provincial government shows that a small community such as Rimbey is capable of pulling off large projects and expects that the expansion will result in the community becoming a major tourist destination as a result.
“This is an overwhelming show of support from the provincial government on this new type of project for communities and I just can’t say enough about working with Ray Prins and the Alberta government to show them that Rimbey has energy and the power to pull off projects that are larger than one would usually think,” Barr said.
“The goal with this one of course, by a whole bunch of people, is to create a new racing venue for Alberta, western Canada and the western United States that will attract tourism for years and years to come,” he added.
Barr said the completion of the project is a good story all around and will go a long way in solidifying the economic base of the town.
“All communities are looking for ways to bring tourism into their community and we’re very fortunate to have a group of people through corporate and personal support on the project to the level we have,” Barr said. “That the Alberta government could see that this was a key project within the province definitely helped. They certainly have come to the plate with some sizable dollars to help us push it through and at a very key point in time for the project.”
He added that while the site has seen a flurry of construction projects over the past few years, the addition of a new drag strip can only be a feather in the hat of the community.
“Lots of work has been done over the last three or four years, but the quarter-mile drag strip is certainly the centerpiece of the project and it will draw the masses of people – both as spectators and as participants, so there are some really exciting things that are going to be happening over the next several years,” Barr said.
“The whole facility has been growing right from Day One. Each event records a larger attendance. Certainly with the opening each year of another venue – last year it was the ConocoPhillips Mud Bogs, the year before it was the Triple Brothers Motocross, every year has had a major facility open up,” he added. “The quarter-mile drag strip takes the most amount of work, and the project is still not complete, but this is certainly a key step in moving the project forward.”
When complete, Barr said the new strip will be state-of-the-art and will be long enough to handle the most powerful of vehicles including local cars right up to jet-fuelled dragsters and funny cars, and the committee is licking their chops at the prospects of Rimbey becoming the racing venue community of western Canada.
He said the brainchild of the construction of a new drag strip at the Motorsports Park was an annual event that draws thousands of spectators to downtown Rimbey every summer and generates hundreds of thousands of tourism dollars for the community.
“The 100-foot Shoot-Out was the start of the committee or the team that created the conceptual plan on where we’d like to go with the whole project and certainly, the driving force behind that has been the committee and the volunteers that have been involved over the years,” Barr said. “The key is that everybody realized that it was a large project when it started, and for us to be this far advanced in such a short period of time is just overwhelming.
“Now, with the dollars coming in from the province and the support of our MLA Ray Prins to get this thing to the next stage, it is such a key point for everybody that’s been involved over the years, so we’re looking forward to some real exciting times.”
Barr concluded by giving credit where credit is due and acknowledged that without the help of many volunteers, service clubs and a strong show of corporate support, the project may have never gotten off the ground.
“Many communities have tried to do a number of big projects, and it’s very, very difficult. We’re blessed with people in this community and the corporate support that we’ve been able to find to come on board with us,” he said. “But again, this is such an exciting type of project that it’s pretty easy to get turned on with it. The community has really, really come together and it’s probably one of the most unique projects out there in that it involves pretty much all the organizations within the community helping out at one point or another.”
Currently there is only about 300 metres of base work to complete before the committee’s attention turns to laying down concrete and asphalt on the new drag strip which will be completed throughout the 2008 season.
In a ‘best-case’ scenario, Barr said there is a remote possibility that they could hold their first drag meet sometime in the next year, however he acknowledged that it would be unlikely.