Town Manager: Change Brings Big Hit to Speedway
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowDuring a typical year, the town of Speedway sees race fans from around the world descend upon its close-knit community of 13,000. Following Tuesday’s announcement from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway that this year’s Indy 500 will run without fans, we spoke with Speedway Town Manager Carlos May to find out how the changes will impact the town.
May, who took over the town’s leadership position in June, says its been an interesting start.
“When you add in COVID, when you add in all sorts of new restrictions, and new ways of operating, it certainly throws you a curve ball,” said May. “Once I got settled in, in terms of employee relationships and getting my head wrapped around various ongoing projects, it certainly evened out the course of my day in terms of day-to-day operations.”
As far as an economic impact, May says the town itself is a governmental entity and doesn’t see any major increase or decrease in revenue.
“Most of our monies come from taxes; specifically property tax, income tax, gasoline tax, motor vehicle and highway fund. Those are our main revenue sources, as well as our utilities,” May said. “The businesses, however, are in a far different situation. They obviously do well year-round, but the race time is a major cash cow for them. We go from 13,000 to over 330,000 people. It’s a huge economic impact to their businesses.”
May says the community has modified its business operations to weather the storm.
“Speedway always gears up in May to put on the greatest spectacle in racing, and we’re very good at that. Of course, with the pandemic, that immediately altered the situation. We have a phenomenal partner in Penske Motorsports and Roger Penske himself. Mark Miles’ and Doug Boles’ leadership over at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway have done a phenomenal job of moderating expectations, especially since things change on a daily basis, if not on an hourly basis,” said May.
May says though he, too, is crestfallen, he believes next year’s fans will enjoy the town’s upgrades and improvements even more.
“When they come back next year, there’s going to be even more of a wow factor because more development is going to be occurring. We’ve got a new development coming in on the 13th block of main street, the Wiltshire Hotel and various other patchwork around Main Street that we want to do,” May said.
May says the projects are slated to start work next year.
Speedway Town Manager Carlos May discusses the economic impact of the Indy 500 without fans.