The announcement that Manzanita Speedway has been sold and is closing in mid-April was a surprise to many of us. The track has been purchased by Southwest Rigging, which plans to level the track. There's a petition at www.savethetracks.com that aims to prevent its demise. Check out the site for more information. Then, click over to the petition and sign it when you get the chance. (Hat-tip to Ken for the heads-up.)

I've never been to Manzy myself, but being from New Jersey I'm familiar with tracks closing down. I remember watching sprint races at Manzanita on TNN during the winter time in the '90s.

It's hard to imagine that they're going to bulldoze a historic track just to use the land to store crane equipment. One would think that with all the land readily available in Arizona, there has to be a better site for crane storage.

According to The Arizona Republic, it sounds like the track has succumbed to what has become a common thread in short-track racing: lagging attendance and noise complaints of an encroaching residential population. Nevertheless, it seems the owners will be raking in a substantial profit from the sale.

Southwest Industrial Rigging purchased Manzanita from co-owner Mel and son Bobby Martin for an amount the younger Martin said was between "$10 (million) and $20 million." The Martins bought the track, which encompasses 38 acres on the southeast corner of 35th Avenue and Broadway Road, in August 2007 for $3.5 million.

"I haven't slept two hours a night since we agreed to sell two weeks ago," said Bobby Martin, who is 59. "I was 2 years old when I first came to Manzanita. My dad helped build the track (in 1951). I own race cars, and we've spent $1 million for renovations.

"I thought we'd get 10 years out of it before we'd have to sell it. But attendance is down 40 percent, and we lost ($468,465) last year.

"We still had enough money to last several years. It's just that the nail in the coffin was some environmental issues involving dust and also noise complaints from neighbors. We knew eventually we'd get closed down because of it."

Bobby Martin said fans have been understandably upset with the news.

"A lot of people have called us and expressed their dissatisfaction," Martin said. "Everybody feels like we didn't give racing people a chance to buy it, but I didn't know anyone out there with that kind of money. And even if there might have been, you still had the environmental issues. The county had two pages of complaints against us."

My suspicion is that it had more to do with the money than the "environmental issues," but we may never know. Either way, it'd be a shame if the track is closed.