Racetrack hearing stalled until end of June

Local court asked to reconsider stepping aside

Nate Giarnese

TAMWORTH—A public hearing once set for this week with racetrack builder Club Motorsports Inc. has been postponed until the end of June while lawyers try to convince a local judge to step into a complicated court fight that has reached the N.H. Supreme Court.

Tamworth town attorney Rick Sager said on Wednesday, nearly a week before the Derry developer was to make its latest bid here for a wetlands permit, that CMI had been rescheduled for the next regular planning board meeting on June 27. Originally, the developer was scheduled for a public hearing Tuesday.

Sager said he and CMI's lawyer are now trying to convince a Carroll County Superior Court judge to reconsider the court's ruling that it had no jurisdiction to act on legal motions filed here by CMI and Sager's office.

“Thomas Quarrels (CMI's lawyer) and I will be seeking to have the court re-evaluate its jurisdiction,” Sager said.

CMI's original plans to build a first-in-the-state private racing club on the north face of Mount Whittier were rejected last fall by town planners, who cited wetlands rules. The fate of the track remains mired in numerous lawsuits, including a CMI appeal of the rejection.

Sager had asked the superior court to grant the planning board a stay on its deadline to make a decision on a second, scaled-back application filed by CMI to run only an access road into the uplands of its 250 acres. The stay would give planners up to 45 days after an expected September ruling by the N.H. Supreme Court on a closely linked case that could render much of the local litigation moot.

In that case, CMI has asked the state's highest court to overturn a superior court victory by citizen's group Focus: Tamworth, a ruling that ordered CMI to file for the local permit.

Meanwhile, Quarrels in a countersuit, asked the superior court to force members of the planning board and the conservation commission to recuse themselves when those boards review company plans. The court in its jurisdictional finding also declined to rule on that motion, Sager said.

CMI's Valley Motorsports Park development is located in wooded land on the north face of Mount Whittier off Route 25 in Tamworth, approximately two miles west of the intersection of Routes 25 and 16. The proposed 242-acre, $28 million development will include a more than three-mile, European-style road course for drivers and motorcyclists to develop and practice driving skills and attend performance and safety driving schools.