Sonoma Raceway at 50: Haven for Bay Area motor sports grew from ranch land

SEARS POINT – A half-century ago, two North Bay auto racing fans formulated a bold vision while on a hunting trip on Sonoma County's southernmost hillside overlooking San Pablo Bay's mudflats and the gateway to Sonoma Valley.

At the time, dairy cows grazed the verdant hills. But Kentfield developer Jim Coleman and Point Reyes attorney Robert Marshall Jr. envisioned the rolling knolls and valleys as the perfect place to build a curvy road course and drag strip.

Five decades later, Sonoma Raceway hosts more than 100 auto-centric businesses, 300 daily employees and 340 days a year of racing-related events at its sprawling 1,620-acre facility at Highways 121 and 37.

The raceway is celebrating its 50th season of racing throughout this year by looking back on how far it's come, while peering into the future for what might become of the facility as entertainment and automotive trends evolve with younger fans and greener practices.

In 1991, Steve Page, an Oakland Athletics' marketing executive who'd never even been to a NASCAR race, was named track president. He took the steering wheel after a carousel of owners and operators rolled through over the years.

By multiple accounts, the track and its reputation were in less than stellar shape. Little outreach to the property's neighbors had been done. The fan experience was almost an afterthought.

The word “rustic” is commonly used to describe the course in its first two-plus decades.

“Rustic is a generous word,” Page said. “Frankly, it was a hellhole from a customer-facing viewpoint. It was a very good racetrack, but there was no infrastructure to give guests a great experience.”

Race fans – traditionally not a fancy lot anyway – sat on prickly star thistle on unsheltered dirt hillsides, the blistering summer sun bearing down. In the rain, it was a mucky mess.

The raceway wasn't any better for performers. There were only four garages, forcing race teams to work out of the back of their trucks.

Master plans for the original Sears Point Park filed with the county in November 1967 show a simple road course with long and short configurations and one long drag strip, dotted throughout with stands of trees. A small grandstand, but no frills.

Builders broke ground on the 2.52-mile course on Aug. 14, 1968 and construction wrapped up in November. The Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) hosted an enduro race on December 1, the first professional event there.

The first public event came in the new year with the first full season of racing. Motorsports have continued in the hills south of Sonoma, minus two years, for the next five decades.

Sears family land

The raceway was named for the former holder of Sears Point, the southern Sonoma County tract of land owned by Franklin Sears, who settled on 600 acres south of Sonoma in 1851. Sears and his father-in-law later bought another 15,000 acres, part of which is home to the present day racetrack.

Its early years saw a series of ownership changes and infighting between principals. Through the 1980s, the track struggled to find its identity and become profitable.

Just four months after it opened, the raceway changed hands for the first time. Filmways, a Los Angeles-based entertainment company known for “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Petticoat Junction,” bought the facility for $4.5 million.

In early 1970, Dan Gurney won a 150-mile USAC IndyCar race from a field that included race legends Mario Andretti and Al Unser. But shortly afterward, the track closed to become a Filmways tax shelter after $300,000 in reported losses.

Filmways resurfaced in 1975 and hired Jack Williams, the 1964 NHRA top-fuel drag champion, as operations chief. The company wanted to remove county-imposed attendance restrictions and build a major-event schedule – heightening concerns of residents of the Sonoma Valley area.

In 1979, a group called Black Mountain Inc. purchased the track for a reported $1.5 million.

The next year was a busy one for the new owners.

Changes and challenges

Black Mountain brought in a partner, the Long Beach Grand Prix Association, in hopes of improving marketing and public relations.

At the same time, a group of nearby property owners attempted to have the track's use permit revoked, citing trespassing, vandalism and littering problems.

Serious financial issues surfaced, forcing the cancellation of one race and a $20,000 loss on another.

By 1981, the Long Beach partners sought to rename the track Golden State International Raceway, arguing that “Sears Point” was too regional to gain national name recognition with sponsors. Meanwhile, a dispute broke out between Black Mountain and Filmways over payment. Filmways regained ownership – then promptly sold it for a reported $800,000. The new owners renamed the track Sears Point International Raceway.

Harvey “Skip” Berg of Tiburon came in as a partner in 1983 to help bankroll track improvements, but fought with Williams and ultimately won control in 1986.

Track officials announce that 1990 was the first year it made a profit, just a few years after the track had begun hosting National Hot Rod Association and NASCAR Winston Cup races.

Page was hired in 1991, lured to the Sonoma lifestyle after an 11-year career in public relations with the Oakland A's baseball club.

He quickly realized he had a PR minefield ahead of him after years of neglect by the revolving door of former owners.

“The track had a rough reputation,” he said. “There had not been a lot of effort into talking to the business community, being a responsible operation.”

Diana Brennan, the track's vice president of communications and marketing, tells Page that at one point, it was considered a bad idea “to drive into town” with raceway ID on your vehicle.

“The feeling was palpable,” Page said.

From dairy to drag racing

Nancy and Tony Lilly are the last nearby property owners who were there before the racetrack. Decades ago, Nancy Lilly's mother and her friend wrote letters opposing track expansion.

Their family property – it was a dairy when she was a child – has endured the worst of the loud daily happenings at the track, plus the massive events several times a year including NASCAR, Indy and the drag races.

“When they first wanted to start Thursday night drag racing, (vice president Lee Mosell) offered me a chance to go out to dinner ever Thursday night,” she said. “I said ‘No thanks, I'd rather be able to stay home and enjoy my home at night.'”

The Lillys have fought the raceway on multiple issues, including suing and ultimately winning an agreement from track owners to limit noise except for certain events like NASCAR and the drag races.

The couple, whose ranch is two miles away, sued after a multi-million renovation plan in 2000 moved millions of pounds of dirt around the property, added new buildings, new seating terraces and updated facilities throughout.

Her husband, when they sued almost 20 years ago, said this: “We live in a wonderful place and they are the thorn in the Garden of Eden.”

Nancy Lilly said that much hasn't changed.

Knowing that neither is leaving, they have forged a truce with the raceway, and Page, with whom Lilly said she has a cordial relationship.

“It's a very sobering thing to be looking back at 50 years, pretty much my whole life, dealing with things at the racetrack,” she said. “It's been a constant battle trying to keep up the energy to fight the things that need to be fought.”

New owner, new direction

Page said the purchase in 1996 for $38.1 million by O. Bruton Smith and his publicly traded Speedway Motorsports Inc. turned the formerly “rustic” track and its somewhat inattentive owners into a more professional and collaborative operation – even with its critics.

“Any business is only as good as its word,” he said. “Before, we didn't have a lot of credibility. But when we did what we said we would, that helped.”

The 1998-2000 renovation project, meant to improve the spectator experience as well as reduce the maddening traffic congestion that had become part of race days, took four years and two environmental impact reports before it met approval.

The work ended up costing more than $100 million.

The plan to quadruple grandstand capacity to 100,000 spectators with aluminum bleachers atop the visible hillside prompted an opposition campaign that included scare tactics and misleading allegations, including a suggestion that the track was going to “be Woodstock every weekend,” Page said.

Vocal opposition led track management to revisit the grandstand idea, and taking a page from Italian motorcycle racetracks, installed terraced hillside seating set into the trackside curves instead of at the crests.

“We looked at it and the aesthetics of those looked so much better,” Page said.

When the track opened, the use permit was a page and a half, he said.

“It's now 54 pages,” he said.

Lilly said that's an overstatement, but agreed now that the track has more rules – justifiably.

Critics' challenges over the years have been “absolutely worth it,” she said, to retain some quality of life around the booming, buzzing motorsports.

“When it opened, the county felt it was in the far corner of the county, far enough away from the center of population that no one would really mind what went on,” she said. “They have enough influence here that I feel like if we hadn't opposed things, it would be a vastly different place.”

Page said while all the county restrictions can at times be frustratingly limiting, many are simply smart business or being a good neighbor – something the raceway intends on remaining for the foreseeable future.

“We have a staff that understands our business is part of the community,” he said. “We want to participate and be involved in the community.”

You can reach Staff Writer Lori A. Carter at 707-521-5470 or lori.carter@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @loriacarter.