A Priceless Addition To The Waterfront

The ProLogical end result to Staten Island’s NASCAR failure:

Concerns about race weekend traffic drove the NASCAR debate and ultimately killed a deal to build an 82,500-seat track on the edge of Bloomfield.

But those very same worries — this time over truck traffic, not eager Dale Earnhardt Jr. fans — will likely accompany a plan to build a large industrial park there.

And the entertainment value is nil.

International Speedway Corp. confirmed yesterday that it had reached a preliminary agreement to sell its land to ProLogis, the world’s largest developer of distribution warehouses — places that are also magnets for trucks.

Unlike the proposed NASCAR track, however, an industrial park is permitted under the site zoning and does not need City Council approval, something that proved elusive for NASCAR.

A spokesman for ProLogis, the publicly traded Denver-based Fortune 1000 company, said it had reached a preliminary agreement with ISC to acquire the 676-acre site in Bloomfield. The transaction is expected to close by year’s end.

. . .

The feared flood of fans on race weekends will be replaced by a steady stream of trucks to the site, minus the fun and brand-name sponsorships. Former Borough President Guy Molinari, who once worked as a lobbyist for the racetrack proposal, stopped short yesterday of saying, “I told you so.”

“You could have wound up with something very, very nice that would have endeared us to the rest of the world,” he contended of the failed NASCAR proposal. “They would have heard about us on Staten Island, and the image would have been improved by NASCAR coming to our shores.”

Molinari recalled that when ISC executives warned the community that if the track did not get built, the site would be used for industrial purposes, they were accused of strongarm tactics.

At the time, ISC officials estimated that as many as 2,200 trucks each day could traverse borough highways if the site was used for industrial purposes. An ominous ISC slide presentation showed smokestacks looming behind a line of trucks, and ISC claimed that three race weekends a year was preferable to the alternative. That prompted some lawmakers at the time to accuse the company of making threats to get support for a track.

“We didn’t aim to be threatening. We just aimed to set the facts out. I’m not surprised,” Molinari said yesterday of the ProLogis deal.

Earlier: Container Ships Are Exciting, But They Sure Don’t Go Vroom Like A NASCAR Track.