Conway Daily Sun
2006-04-27

Club Motorsports CEO in Tamworth tonight for public forum

Racetrack company president hopes Farnum, once an opponent, is unbiased as selectman

Nate Giarnese

TAMWORTH — Club Motorsports Inc. president and CEO Lloyd Dahmen and a senior vice president will arrive here on Thursday for a groundbreaking public forum with local authorities and company officials on their bitterly divisive race track proposal.

Club Motorsports officials, who made it quietly onto the selectmen's agenda with only a phone call, said Tuesday they aim to bridge gaps with opponents of the driving park as progress towards construction remains stalled by legal challenges.

Dahmen took the wheel of the Derry company amidst a pitched battle with a citizens group, Focus: Tamworth . While wrangling over local control and environmental impact has spilled into the courthouse and the statehouse, Dahmen said Thursday marks a move away from conflict.

"The purpose of this is to attempt to reduce the tensions that have built up over the last couple of years," he said of the forum he hopes will foster a productive give and take with leaders and citizens, now spilt so sharply. "A lot of water has flowed under the bridge and over the dam."

Dahmen is hedging that two new town leaders will step back from past opposition and give unbiased consideration to plans to build its mountainside retreat for high-performance driving enthusiasts.

Newly-elected selectmen Willie Farnum has met with Dahmen before, Dahmen said, as a prominent member of Focus. He has since stepped down from the group's advisory committee to avoid a possible conflict of interest, a group spokesman said.

Farnum and Selectman Tom Abugelis defeated two outgoing board members this year who were staunch in their public support for Club Motorsports. After the win, Abugelis, who has harbored concerns about the track's impact on water quality and noise, trumpeted a new day of open government in Tamworth . The last board was criticized as lacking transparency.

Abugelis at his office Tuesday said he hopes to bring conversation out in the open. So far, it has been has been largely wrought by lawyers in private, or at least unpublicized, meetings, he and Dahmen said.

"Up until now it's been all legal to legal between Focus and CMI," he said. "Dialogue needs to happen in order to inform the voters of the town of Tamworth . It seems to me that's where the meaningful compromise will come."

Dahmen agreed meaningful dialogue recently has been driven by attorneys. He said he hopes Abugelis will make good on a campaign promise to hear all sides. "I think he can look at things in an unbiased fashion," the executive said.

Abugelis, a business owner, pledged to remain in what he calls the "dynamic middle ground, not sitting on the fence, not wishy-washy. The balance between the extremes," he said. At a public hearing over a year ago he was critical of Club Motorsports' environmental impact assessments and said aggressive tactics by company officials had turned him off. He said afterwards he was mistakenly portrayed as a Focus member. He has never been with the group, he said.

Dahmen, a soft spoken 65-year-old car enthusiast, comes off far differently than the bombastic entrepreneur, Stephan Condodemetraky, who reportedly raised early capital for the fledgling company. Under Condodemetraky's leadership, Club Motorsports heralded a sharply anti-Focus public relations message, delivered through a professional firm no longer employed by the company.

But for Dahmen, who now needs to guide a seemingly critical compromise on noise limits, Farnum is somewhat more of a concern. "Clearly Willie Farnum was a member of the steering committee of Focus Tamworth ... No question Willie started out being a Focus member."

"I don't know how he will be unbiased. Time will tell," he said. "He's a duly-elected selectmen. I hope he will look at things objectively."

Dahmen did not specify any immediate decisions faced by Farnum and the board that could affect the track. But debate continues to revolve around projected noise levels and limits that are reflected differently in conflicting expert reports.

In response to the company's plans to build, and its contentious exemption from a local racetrack ordinance, town meeting passed a noise ordinance targeting its operation. Club Motorsports has said it was a Focus initiative which effectively shuts them down. Abugelis says he supports it as the clear will of the people.

Selectmen are charged with enforcing such an ordinance. But Dahmen says the compromise he hopes for will spring from voters.

"We are not asking them to decide to enforce or not enforce the sound ordinance," Dahmen said. A resolution he hopes will come by way of a people's ballot.

Abugelis agreed noise should be a focus of discussion. "It seems to me that some meaningful compromise will come," he said. "If in the end CMI decides to stay we need to have communications with them."

But Focus press coordinator, Kate Vachon, says no compromise on noise can be had. "I don't feel there can be a compromise on the sound level. There is significant scientific evidence" backing a stricter one set in a town ordinance, she said. "The limits in their operating plan violates the town ordinance."

Dahmen vowed the company has braced itself to withstand continued opposition. Despite ongoing challenges by Focus, Dahmen said the track will not be derailed. The question is when will construction start.

"I will say that our shareholders and our directors want very much to build this facility and we have placed the company in a position where we can endure all the little and the big delay tactics," he said. "We're going to be around for a long time."

Dahmen was uncertain of the prospects of a 5,000 to 10,000 square foot sales office planned to be built on the property this spring.

Of Focus, he said "They are intelligent and they have a lot of money in back of them and they hold their beliefs very, very firmly."

"Everybody is spending a lot of money," said Vachon. She would not elaborate on the fiscal backing or fundraising for the group, which is also fighting a legal case against that has reached the state supreme court. "We are just a group of people."

Dahmen said the company has a group of investors dedicated to auto sports, and is selling club memberships for upwards of $10,000 on its company website.

Of selectmen, who could be thrust into at least a moderator's role for the inevitable discussions that will spread into the crowd Thursday, he said, "When you are sitting in the selectman's chair, you have an obligation to the government and the democratic process to listen to everyone."

In turn Dahmen said the company will do the same. Dahmen conceded that the track may bring some negatives some worry about increased traffic, noise and environmental degradation. But he said the down sides will be far outstripped by the economic benefits of construction work and jobs. "I have no doubt some skilled people in Tamworth are under-worked," he said.

All it took was a phone call to get on the agenda, leading to speculation around town hall as to the nature of the visit. The old paper form used to sign up for selectmen's meetings is gone, a relic of a past, more formalized process under the last administration. The company did not notify the media or a make a public announcement of the hearing where it said it plans to clear up misconceptions.

Company Vice President Jim Hoenscheid will present a comparison of decibel limits of various sounds around town to estimates for the driving club. "A truck driving at 50 miles an hour on Route 25 makes this kind of sound," for example, he said. "Kids playing at a a playground makes this kind of sound."

"Its all about being reasonable," he said.

But Vachon cautioned such comparisons are false. Decibel levels are only one part of a complex series of factors that can disturb the public, she said. Quality and duration, she said, weigh heavily, The "piercing" sound of finely-tuned cars running in loops, not ceasing for hours, "that is disturbing," she said. "Certainly other tracks operate at the levels in the ordinance."

A study by U.S. Army Corps of engineers confirmed most of Vachon's statements. It also confirmed the company's argument that low background noise from the community is audible at the site. But, the report said, the track overlooking the town from the side of a mountain, would bounce its sound down from a rock ledge.

"Its not personal," Vachon said. "They have to comply with a town ordinance."