IndyCar: New Titans stadium to wipe out IndyCar track, race will relocate (8th Update)
The Tennessee Titans have the green light for their new stadium.
Nashville’s Metro Council passed a $2.1 billion proposal early Wednesday morning to build a new domed stadium slated to open in time for the 2027 season.
The new 60,000-seat stadium will be built on 15 acres along the east bank of the Cumberland River and boast a translucent roof. It will be a potential host for the Super Bowl, College Football Playoffs, and NCAA Final Four games.
The Nashville Race organizers want to continue the downtown IndyCar street race, but they are struggling to find a layout for 2024 through 2026 anywhere near as good as the existing one.
But they hope to come up with something that IndyCar, the City Officials and impacted businesses will accept. It may not run the cars over the Korean Veterans Bridge again, but that is still up in the air.
Crowds have decreased the last two years that the race was held, but there are plans to sign a new 3-year deal with IndyCar.
“We’ve been prepared for this,” Nashville GP CEO Jason Rittenberry told RACER. “And we’ve been planning with [circuit designer] Tony Cotman and myself and IndyCar and have been meeting and discussing and working on a plan for ‘24 and beyond.
“We are in the process of signing a new three-year extension with IndyCar, so we will continue the race, and it will be a new course, but it will still be in downtown Nashville.”
“The stadium and construction obviously is going to make things a little more challenging for us,” he said. “But we have full support from the city, from the mayor, and we are moving forward. Our goal is to make some announcements prior to our event to share with the world what our plan is moving forward, but we’ve just got a few things to get signed and executed before we can do that. The good news is the race isn’t going anywhere. The city wants us here, IndyCar wants to be here, and we want to continue promoting this event, so we’re not going anywhere. We’re just going to make things a little more exciting in the future.”
April 20, 2023
–by Mark Cipolloni–
The Tennessee Titans are one step closer to a new $2.1 billion domed stadium in Nashville.
At around midnight on Wednesday, the city council voted 25-11 to send the proposal to a final vote, according to The Tennessean.
The blueprint, released in October 2022, shows a 1.7-million-square-foot building with 60,000 seats and a retractable dome smack on top of the existing Nashville IndyCar paddock.
The final vote will take place on April 25, during a meeting in which about four hours of debate could take place between supporters and opponents of the project.
If approved, the stadium wouldn’t be slated to open until 2026 at the earliest.
With construction of the new stadium to likely start late this year, or early next, it will wipe out the IndyCar paddock, hence the 2023 race could be final time for the Nashville GP as we currently know it.
The layout of the Nashville IndyCar track will be severely impacted. It may require a complete relocation of the race elsewhere in the city.
March 9, 2023
–by Mark Cipolloni–
The future of a new stadium for the Tennessee Titans has entered its final series of hurdles.
The deal must go through a series of three votes by Nashville’s Metro Council.
Metro council members approved legislation for the domed stadium on Tuesday in the first of three votes, despite 10 council members voting against the proposal. The second and final votes are scheduled for April 4 and 18.
Mayor John Cooper said the proposed agreement would “relieve the existing enormous unfunded financial burden on the city, return 60 acres of land back to city control, and keep the Titans in Nashville for the long term.”
A Titans spokesperson said that there have been 34 public meetings regarding the plan since July, and at least 10 more will be held ahead of the second council vote.
It was previously reported that funding would include around $1.26 billion in revenue bonds, $840 million from the NFL and the Titans, $500 million in state money, and hotel tax revenue. Any cost overruns would be paid by the league and team.
February 28, 2023
By Mark Cipolloni
The latest Proposal for the New $2.1B Titans Stadium has now been approved by John Cooper, the Mayor of Nashville.
The project will rely on revenue bonds, sales and hotel tax diversions and state contributions, adding up to $1.26 billion in public money — the largest amount ever for an NFL stadium.
Once the proposal is approved, Nashville will start collecting a 1% hotel tax as part of that public funding.
The legislation will go before the Metro Council on March 7, with a vote taking place by the end of April, according to Nashville Business Journal, which also expects the stadium to be completed by 2027.
Since there are usually construction delays, there is a good chance IndyCar won’t get their existing downtown circuit location back again until 2028 or 2029.
Construction is slated to begin in 2024. A new location for the race is being researched.
February 22, 2023
By Mark Cipolloni
Despite the fact that the construction of the new Titans Stadium will completely wipe out the IndyCar paddock, Jason Rittenberry, President and chief operating officer of Big Machine Music City Grand Prix, is determined to carry on with the race, elsewhere in the city if he has to.
Last year, the event brought 108,000 fans over 3-days to Music City, down from the 130,000 the year prior.
Tickets this year start at $139 per person for three-day general admission, with all-inclusive club packages ranging between $849 to $2,850.
The Nashville Business Journal spoke with Rittenberry about what fans can expect this year and his vision for the event in the years to come.
We were obviously after the diehard motorsports fan. … That group is the easiest to attract,” said Rittenberry.
“The second group would be a younger, more millennial experience seeker that just [wants] to go to an event in Nashville. … That’s the crowd we had in year one that we don’t feel like we were able to get back in year two. … So trying to get that group back, we are putting a lot of effort into that for year three, looking at more diverse music options versus all country, looking at some other things going later into the night, racing under the lights.
“The third group is families. They came back, but we felt like we need to provide more for them so a lot of the changes that we’re making year three is really focused on that family coming out and spending the day at the facility.
“We are doing things like adding more soft seating bar areas to just hand out and lounge and listen to music versus standing in front of the stage, simple things like that we are doing for year three.”
Rittenberry has some other changes in store this year as well.
“Sunday’s IndyCar race start time change is a direct reflection of talking to our fans. … Instead of 2:30 p.m. or 3:00 p.m. green flag, we are now at an 11:30 a.m. green flag.
On the question of what is his vision for the event beyond this year given the NFL stadium will wipe out his circuit, Rittenberry told the Nashville Business Journal, “We are the fifth of five street racing circuits in IndyCar, and the other four have all been in existence for 20-plus years. Long Beach California just completed their 45th year last year, so that in itself is our goal, is for this race to be a staple in Nashville for the foreseeable future. We want to be in year 20, year 30, year 40, and that’s our goal, the current city leadership, that’s their goal.
“We have assurances from the mayor, we have assurances from the city that our event will continue. We are in the process of signing a three-year extension with IndyCar and the city. We will at least have an agreement in place for the next three years after this year.
“Whatever we need to do, we can make work with what’s happening downtown and the East Bank. A lot of people are already asking the question, “What are you going to do if a new stadium is built?” Our answer is, we will adapt to whatever is happening downtown. If we need to adjust our course, we’re already in the process of doing that. I’m looking at alternate routes and how the course could be laid out with a stadium under construction. We are confident that our race will be in downtown, and we will be racing on the city streets for the foreseeable future. ”
December 1, 2022
Not only will the new Titans Stadium completely wipe out the IndyCar paddock, a 130-acre development is planned to be built and opened by 2026, which means none of the land in the vicinity of the new stadium will be available for an IndyCar track as well.
Related Story: NASCAR’s plan to drive IndyCar out of Nashville
October 25, 2022
The Tennessee Titans have released renderings for their new $2.1 billion stadium that will wipe out a large portion of the existing IndyCar Nashville street circuit.
October 23, 2022
Nashville’s promoter is confident that IndyCar’s Nashville street race can survive the disruption during construction the new NFL stadium will create.
Music City Grand Prix COO Jason Rittenberry is open to moving the event, potentially somewhere else in the city or even to the Nashville Superspeedway which IndyCar used to race on, but believes that is an unlikely scenario.
However, he is adamant that the race will go ahead in 2024 and 2025.
“With the assurances we’ve been given from the Mayor’s office and the city, we feel confident we’ll be able to keep this downtown in some way, shape or form, but that’s not to say we haven’t thought about that, yes,” Rittenberry told Indianapolis’ IndyStar newspaper.
“If it absolutely came down to that as a last resort, and the city said there was nowhere else to run this race, yeah we’d consider it (Nashville SuperSpeedway), absolutely.
“Is that in our consideration at this point? No, but we’d do that before we didn’t have a race for two years.
“This is all tough to think about, but we’re looking at this as a very, very long-term commitment.
“We’re thinking about a 20-plus-year deal, and if we’re disrupted for two, we feel confident enough in the city, our event and IndyCar’s product that this isn’t going to set us back.
“We think we can offset those two years with other enhancements to the event, and after those, we can come back bigger and better for an event better event for our fans.”
October 23, 2022
On Monday, it was announced that a new Tennessee Titans domed Nissan Stadium was approved and will be built directly in the center of the IndyCar track.
The Titans’ new home will cost up to $2.2 billion and would be able to host events that aren’t possible at Nissan Stadium — like the Super Bowl, NFL combine, and the College Football Playoff National Championship.
The current parking lot of the existing stadium, which today is the IndyCar paddock, will be bulls-eye for the new stadium.
With construction starting later in 2023, the goal is for the new stadium to be completed in 2026.
Once the new stadium is completed the current Nissan Stadium would be demolished and would become part of the city’s East Bank plan, which includes transforming that area from parking lots into a beautiful neighborhood with green space and the transportation hub and other great city amenities
It seems unlikely that the IndyCar Nashville race, in its current location, can continue past next August.
A new location will need to be found, or the race terminated.
There’s always the 1.33-mile concrete Nashville Superspeedway oval the event can return to. The oval is located in Gladeville, Tennessee, about 30 mi southeast of Nashville. Roger Penske wants more ovals on the schedule and Nashville Superspeedway is the perfect fit. It’s extremely fast and dangerous.
Mark C. reporting for AutoRacing1.com