Winterport officials and the group that runs the local dragway can’t agree on a new lease that would allow car racing to resume at the town-owned property this year.
For decades, the Winterport Dragway has organized races at Fernald Field, a property which now belongs to the town after the federal government previously used it as an airport.
But the Winterport Dragway Association’s previous one-year lease expired on March 31, and it lost the ability to automatically renew the agreement for another year because officials say that it was in default for not providing adequate financial records.
Now, dragway officials are pushing back against the terms of an alternate new eight-month lease proposed by the town, arguing that they should have more certainty they’ll be able to renew the lease in future years.
On April 3, the Town Council approved the language of the new lease for the dragway, which would require it to pay $25,000 to use the town property for the remaining eight months of the calendar year, or $3,125 per month. That’s nearly double the monthly rent that it paid during the previous year, when the annual cost of its lease was $20,000, working out to $1,667 per month.
More controversially, officials also removed the ability of the dragway to automatically renew the lease after the eight months is up.
So far, dragway officials have not agreed to those new terms.
Several people questioned the proposed lease during the council meeting on April 3, and another one two days earlier. Officials had previously proposed raising the cost of the next eight-month lease even more, to $30,000, or $3,750 per month.
Gage Reynolds, vice president of the Winterport Dragway Association, was especially concerned about the lack of an automatic renewal for the lease next year.
“Asking $30,000 — a $10,000 increase for eight months, no guarantee of next year — from the commercial business side of that, how do I accept that?” Gage said during the April 3 meeting, before the total cost of the lease was reduced to $25,000. “If we got [a three-year lease] with one-year auto-renewal, that’s $100,000 for the town. I think that’s very fair. I just ask fairness of you.”
According to Councilor Corey Ginn, approving an eight-month lease now would allow the town to seek bids for a five-year lease for the property starting in 2026.
“If we do the end of 2025, then it can go to bid, everybody would be happy there. It can go to a five-year lease with the bid,” Ginn said.
In an interview, Town Manager Casey Ashey said the dragway defaulted on its previous lease by not providing adequate financial records to the town. That agreement required it to provide the town with receipts for all people coming through the gate or camping overnight at the dragway on an annual basis.
Reynolds declined to comment on the dragway defaulting on the previous lease.
Under the new lease proposal, the dragway would have to provide those receipts to the town on a quarterly basis, which would be more frequent than the annual basis in its previous agreement.
The Town Council will be revisiting the topic at a meeting Tuesday night, Ashey said.
