Artist Tim Sneed works in a big garage full of motorcycles and metal-working machinery in East Balti

The Baltimore Grand Prix has been billed by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and other civic leaders as a tremendous win for the city and its residents, with a potential $100 million vacation rentals tucson arizona economic impact on the local economy and a $6 million boost to the city s general fund via increased parking, amusement, and hotel-tax revenue. But more: The prestige and excitement of staging an honest-to-Andretti 180 mph, open-wheel street race downtown will vault Baltimore into the big leagues of cities around the world, alongside Monaco and, well, Long Beach, Calif.
With this in mind, City Paper sought out the original dreamers of this grand plan, and tried to get a look inside Baltimore Racing Development, the corporate machine staging the ambitious festival of speed on Sept. 2-4. We wanted vacation rentals tucson arizona to go over the economic projections, learn something about the personalities of the founding fathers, and watch up close as earth and concrete were moved to transform Baltimore s busiest boulevards into a world-class vacation rentals tucson arizona racecourse.
Surrounded by apartment building managers in the Tremont Grand Hotel s capacious ballroom on North Charles Street on July 15, Lonnie Fisher calmly tells each one precisely how tenants will be able to enter and leave their parking garages during next month s traffic-disrupting, road-closing Grand Prix races. He tells them from memory he appears to know every garage door in the 50-block area. His interrogators nod, but they don t smile.
Fisher is here representing Baltimore Racing Development. He was hired as BRD s corporate outreach person because I have a 20-year background in throwing outdoor festivals, he says, most notable among them the annual Starscape event. I have a lot of familiarity with permitting.
There are 100 or more people milling about the ballroom, looking at big maps the city s Department of Transportation has set on easels. They ve come with questions vacation rentals tucson arizona about detours and noise, resigned vacation rentals tucson arizona to the fact that downtown will be effectively closed Labor Day weekend so that the city can make some money. This is, anyway, the theory from which the entire event has sprung.
City Councilmember William Cole (D-11th District) sits in the passenger seat of a doubtful-looking vacation rentals tucson arizona replica of a 1950s MG, gamely recounting for a second time, owing to the reporter vacation rentals tucson arizona s technical incompetence with a video recording how the Grand Prix idea first came to him.
It is a practiced story. Cole started out suitably skeptical, but was made a believer when officials with the Indy Racing League the race s sanctioning body arrived to tell him they had already scouted a potential track: They came back and said, We think this could be a grand slam for Baltimore, Cole says.
All that was needed then in 2009 was some municipal permits, about $7 million worth of roadwork, and enough cash $15 million, Cole guesses; BRD declines to share such information vacation rentals tucson arizona to pay for the setup and all attendant crises.
For the past six years, Mitchell has squeezed oranges on Sunday mornings at the downtown farmers market at a stand he calls Nutin but the Juice. Mitchell, who gave up his council seat in an unsuccessful vacation rentals tucson arizona bid to unseat then Mayor Sheila Dixon in 2007, says the Grand Prix is going to be great for Baltimore, bringing economic development and international tourism, among other benefits.
The founder of Baltimore Racing Development, Steven Wehner, has been called a Baltimore-based entrepreneur in Sun reports about the race. But he has seldom been seen at public events regarding the race, and reportedly sent a statement to the press conference for the opening of BRD s downtown office, rather than attending the August 2009 event in person. Two years later his LinkedIn profile shows zero connections.
City Paper called BRD several vacation rentals tucson arizona times in the spring and summer, seeking formal interviews with Chief Operating Officer Jay Davidson; Fisher, the former impresario of nightclub Sonar who has emerged as BRD s chief fixer; vacation rentals tucson arizona and founding investors. These requests were ignored.
News stories indicate Wehner once owned a car repair business on Martha vacation rentals tucson arizona s Vineyard, and failed in an attempt, earlier this decade, expand it to include a gas station. He domiciled Baltimore Racing Development in his mother s modest Towson townhouse. In 2009 the house was briefly slated for foreclosure proceedings. In June of 2010 Davidson filed corporate papers changing BRD s address to his own Lutherville office. vacation rentals tucson arizona Then, last July, police got a warrant and searched the Towson house, turning up paraphernalia with trace amounts of crack cocaine. Court records indicate that last summer, Wehner vacation rentals tucson arizona was charged vacation rentals tucson arizona with possessing illegal drugs other than marijuana, vacation rentals tucson arizona pleaded not guilty, paid a $250 fine, and received probation vacation rentals tucson arizona before judgment.
In an Aug. 12 phone call responding to questions about Wehner, Davidson says Wehner was bought out by mutual consent around December 2009, and has not been part of the BRD team since. He wanted to pursue other projects, Davidson says, adding that the company vacation rentals tucson arizona should have filed its change of address around that time, rather than six months later.
Artist Tim Sneed works in a big garage full of motorcycles and metal-working machinery in East Baltimore. His shop is called Mobtown Cycle, and he as the son of Bill Whitey Sneed, a Karb Kings car club original member and president (1961- 62), and reviver of the 50s and 60s club in the past decade is a big fan of the Grand Prix.
So big a fan is Sneed, in fact, that he is personally building a customized Harley Davidson Sportster to be auctioned off for charity during the race weekend. They approached me back in March, he says, and wanted to talk to me about building a bike for the race. He says he told them to figure out their budget and come back, then I never really saw them again.
Later, Sneed says, his partner got on him again about doing the charity bike, went through records, found the guy s contact number and set up the deal. I don t really know the cat s name, Sneed says. I m just building the bike.
The charity auction will be but one of myriad events held during the festival of speed, as the race has come to be known. Besides the IndyCar race on Sunday, there will be an American LeMans series race pitting heavily modified Porsches, Ferraris, and Corvettes against one another. There are two other somewhat minor-league vacation rentals tucson arizona road races scheduled as well, along with a 5K foot race. Nonstop music concerts are on the bill, and there are three distinct and separate fun zones depicted on the maps of the race circuit, with one dedicated to family friendly food and entertainment ; one to pro beach volleyball, go-karts, and radio-controlled vacation rentals tucson arizona racing; and one labeled, simply, Party Zone.
Jendras, sitting at his Sykesville dining room table, says he s bought tickets for the whole Grand Prix weekend. He also tried to contact race officials to see about getting some Baltimore race history added to the program, he says, but has not heard back from them.
Jendras father owned a flathead-powered 1936 Ford stock car back in the day, which raced in Westport Stadium, former home of Baltimore s Elite Giants Negro League vacation rentals tucson arizona baseball team. Racing started in 1951, after the Giants moved out, and lasted until 1962. Declining fan interest was the Sun s conclusion at the time.
The fickleness of auto sports was demonstrated even more starkly in 1925, when investors erected an enormous, high-banked oval track in Lanham called the Baltimore-Washington Speedway. It was a spectacle in its day, Jendras says, showing off photos of well-dressed fans packed into grandstands surrounding the 1.25-mile track, which was constructed entirely out of wood. The track may have inspired NASCAR founder Bill France s Daytona Speedway, Jendras contends. vacation rentals tucson arizona But only two races were ever run on it. In 1926 there was a rule change, and the Baltimore-Washington Speedway was dismantled for scrap.
Tony George ran the Indianapolis Speedway starting in 1990, until just two years ago, says Gordon Kirby, editor of Motor Sport magazine and author of seven books, over the phone from his New Hampshire home. And Tony George is the grandson of Tony Hulman [who] bought the Indianapolis Speedway in 1945 after World War II.
As Kirby (and quite a few other folks) tell it, Hulman took a derelict property and, by applying to it a lot of money and showmanship, slowly built it up into the icon of sport we know it as today or knew from the 70s to the early 90s, anyway.
The U.S. Automobile Club sanctioned the races both at Indy and on tracks and street courses around the country through the 1970s.After a dispute with U.S.A.C., in 1979 race team owners led by Dan Gurney established vacation rentals tucson arizona CART, short for Championship Auto Racing Teams, to better vacation rentals tucson arizona promote the races and generate enough money to run the expensive race cars. By the late 1980s CART was beginning to attract top drivers like Emerson Fittipaldi from Formula One (F1), then and now the undisputed world heavyweight champion of motor sports. It was getting better and better, vacation rentals tucson arizona Kirby says.
Then, in 1993, as F1 champion Nigel Mansel switched to CART and took that crown from Fittipaldi, George vacation rentals tucson arizona decided that CART had too much influence and that its rules unfairly benefited the wealthiest teams. He formed the Indy Racing League to stage rival races, effectively splitting open-wheel racing in half. He believed vacation rentals tucson arizona that he should be like NASCAR that he should be the dictator of the sport, Kirby says, just as Bill France Sr. and Bill France Jr. have been the dictators of NASCAR.
There were not enough fans to support two competing leagues, so neither side could earn enough revenue to maintain the cars or attract the best drivers. Long Beach Grand Prix attendance fell to about 50,000, Kirby says. Advertising revenue dropped by a factor of 20, from $650 million in 1996 to $34 million at the trough, according to Randy Bernard, who took over as IndyCar CEO after George vacation rentals tucson arizona s mother and sister, who control the Indianapolis Motor Speedway s board of directors, fired him.
Bernard made his name by