1/8/07
DRO sat down with Scott Gardner the other day for a conversation about his growing drag strip operations. He has just secured the Management Agreement and an option to purchase Cedar Falls Raceway in Cedar Falls, IA. Add that to his other two tracks, Cordova Dragway Park, Cordova, IL and Eddyville Raceway Park, Eddyville, IA that he either owns or is in a partnership on.
To our knowledge he is a member of a very exclusive club. As owner/manager of three drag race facilities he joins Bruton Smith, George Howard and the NHRA as the only track management groups that control three tracks. Gardner was the first to agree that a position like his could be abused and could hurt the racers and the tracks if payouts were cut, admission priced raised and tracks were not prepped right. His concern for the racers, their crews, the fans and the sport of drag racing in general is genuine and refreshing. In today’s world it seems every time someone gets a position of power they use it to their advantage. In this case I got the feeling he genuinely wants the sport to grow and become better.
He sat down and discussed a variety of drag racings issues with us from the way that Bill Bader Sr. ran the IHRA. to insurance issues, to he philosophy concerning the sport.
Scott, let’s start the interview with your history as a track owner and operator.
Scott Gardner: My wife Laura and I celebrated our tenth year at Cordova Dragway in 2006! We actually bought the facility in late 1995 and our first season was in 1996. We bought the track from previous owner Bob Gipson. He didn’t own the ground; that was owned by the nearby nuclear power plant. Doing that allowed us the opportunity to move forward with fixing this place up, installing lighting and other things that needed to be done here. Prior to that, I worked one year (1995) at Great Lakes Drag-a-way and was involved with the ADRA. I did race professionally with the ADRA, which just burnt a hole in my pocket real quick, but it was lot of fun. Racing professionally gave me a perspective, not only of the bracket racing of it, but also the heads-up racing because we did some of that. The ADRA experience gave me a feel for getting people in the stands and coming to the shows and that led to buying Cordova race track here and the operations business.
Recently you’ve got things stirred up here in the Midwest by acquiring a couple of more tracks. You bought the track at Eddyville, Iowa, and you are going to control and promote the track at Cedar Falls. You’ve now joined the ranks of moguls like the NHRA, Bruton Smith and George Howard who own or control multiple tracks. Tell us how and why you did that.
Gardner: Jok, as you know from owning and operating two drag strips yourself it’s very hard to live on the income from one race track. We, Laura and I, don’t live a fabulous lifestyle from the income at Cordova Dragway. We have a nice house, we have nice cars, but we’re not where I want to be in life. I could have continued with the career I had before drag racing and made a lot of money, but it was corporate life, I didn’t enjoy it. This is what we enjoy, this is what I like to do. Therefore, to expand and make it potentially more profitable for us, give more opportunity to the racers and all types of racers, we felt we needed to expand our territory.
Tell us how you got the Cedar Falls and Eddyville Iowa tracks.
Gardner: Laura and myself and our two partners, Gerald Kramer and Jerry Anglese, bought the Eddyville track from (ex-Pro Mod racer and auto dealer) Karl Moyer. We’ve tried to buy the track for some time but were unsuccessful until just recently. Karl Moyer had got
out of drag racing and didn’t want to run the track. Those are my partners with the Eddyville track. That opportunity has come a couple times, but we couldn’t put the deal together until this year. Karl didn’t really have an interest in drag racing anymore and honestly it was costing him money to run the track and, while he’s got good resources, I think it was just an irritant to him and he just wanted to get rid of it.
As for the Cedar Falls strip, there’s a lot of speculation about that because some people aren’t comfortable about how this thing turned out. But I got a call late in the summer from Scott Braun, one of the principals involved there and he said do you have any interest and I said no, we’d just bought Eddyville.
