For more than a year, the owners of Rockingham Speedway have done their wheeling and dealing with a former lender and prospective buyers in private. With the future of racing at the historic track once again in jeopardy, the time has come for co-owners Bill Silas and Andy Hillenburg to break their silence.
Level 1 Motorsports announced Monday that the X-Cup Series’ inaugural season — with 10 races planned in Rockingham — is in limbo. The series-opening race scheduled for April 23 has been canceled.
The reason? Speedway owners have reportedly terminated Vets-Help.org’s lease on the property and changed the locks. The New York-based nonprofit has been in talks to purchase the track since 2014 and had negotiated a rental agreement with an option to buy.
Vets-Help executive director Craig Northacker told the Daily Journal that the lease is still valid and his organization is proceeding with its purchase plans.
A copy of the lease filed with the clerk of court a year after it was signed shows that either party can terminate it with 60 days’ written notice. Jim Blakenbaker, who has served as vice president of operations and development for Vets-Help, said Northacker acknowledged receiving that 60-day notice.
Is the lockout a hardball negotiating tactic designed to force Vets-Help to make its long-awaited offer? Is it a signal that the relationship between speedway owners and Vets-Help has deteriorated and further deals are off the table? Is it all just a colossal misunderstanding?
We don’t know, because Silas and Hillenburg aren’t talking.
A former champion ARCA driver who bought Rockingham Speedway for $4.4 million when Bruton Smith’s Speedway Motorsports Inc. put it on the auction block in 2007, Hillenburg has long been the track’s public face. He served as speedway president and inked deals with ARCA and NASCAR’s Camping World Truck Series to bring racing back to The Rock after a four-year absence.
Before Hillenburg clammed up, Silas was the original silent partner. The Florida businessman provided Hillenburg with investment capital, but he reportedly had little involvement in the speedway’s day-to-day management.
We don’t fault the pair for staying quiet when Salisbury-based Farmers and Merchants Bank took them to court in September 2014 for failure to make timely payments on a $4.2 million loan. Lawyers were involved. The stakes were high.
But Silas bought the lien on Rockingham Speedway from the bank last November, averting a foreclosure. Not only is he a partner in Rockingham Raceway Park, the limited-liability corporation that owns the speedway, he also owns its debt. Silas is clearly in the driver’s seat.
We learned of the foreclosure proceedings and subsequent lien purchase from public records at the clerk of court and register of deeds offices. Hillenburg and Silas have remained mum.
We’d say they declined to comment, but even that’s too generous an assessment, as it implies our reporters have actually spoken with them. Truth be told, neither has picked up the phone or returned our calls or emails for more than a year.
Even the most media-shy sources don’t show that level of discourtesy and disdain to reporters without cause. We’ve enjoyed a good working relationship with Hillenburg in the past. If he or Silas have a quarrel with the newspaper because of our coverage, we’ve yet to hear about it.
This isn’t a self-serving complaint. By shutting out the Daily Journal, Silas and Hillenburg are effectively keeping all of Richmond County’s 47,000 residents in the dark as to their plans for the 1.019-mile oval.
Are they working with Vets-Help to wrap up a deal? Are they in talks with a dark-horse buyer? Do they want to see racing return, or will the track be bulldozed and the land sold for redevelopment?
Rockingham Speedway may be private property, but it’s also an integral part of our community’s history and heritage.
Richmond County deserves answers. So do the amateur drivers in the X-Cup Series and Super Cup Stock Car Series who are scheduled to run laps at The Rock this year. So do the tens of thousands of race fans who want to know what will ultimately become of their beloved track.
Hillenburg and Silas are more than garden-variety absentee landowners. They are stewards of a community institution, and they have an obligation to the people of Richmond County to uphold the public’s trust.
They owe us — they owe you — an explanation.