Fear not, local racing fans — reports of the demise of Twin Cities Raceway Park have been somewhat exaggerated.
A posting on the track’s Facebook page late Wednesday night announcing the track’s closing had an almost funereal feel to it, breaking the news “with a heavy heart.”
While that may have led some to believe that Twin Cities would be dormant for an extended period of time, if not permanently, track owner Tom Wetherald said that is not the case.
A couple of small-scale safety fixes — including repairs to some track maintenance equipment that was vandalized over the winter as well as a section of bleachers — needed to be made, so Wetherald decided the most prudent thing to do was to make them now.
“We just thought it would be a good time to get everything straightened up before we started into the season and breaking down all the time,” he said.
When the maintenance vehicles — a road grader and water truck — were vandalized, the oil and fluids were drained from the vehicles — something that wasn’t noticed until the track opened its season last weekend. By the time it was caught, the transmissions on both vehicles already were shot.
Wetherald said the equipment is already in Columbus and slated for repair, and once that and the other fixes are taken care of, Twin Cities should be able to wave the restart flag.
That will probably happen, he added, sometime in May.
“We hope to do it in two or three weeks,” Wetherald said of the repair work. “These next couple of weeks are going to be rainy and bad anyway, so we thought this would be a good time to do it.”
