We see it all too often these days, but yet another local racing institution is under threat of being dismantled for housing expansion. This time it’s Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey. Due to the state’s affordable housing directive, the township must identify sites to develop new homes, and one of them is a southeast tract of the 534-acre Raceway Park venue.
A plan under consideration would raise as many as 600 units on the property, which first opened in 1965 and is historically best known for drag racing. Raceway Park ceased drag racing in 2018 due to rising costs, but still operates a road course and motocross track, and holds karting and drifting events, including a round of the Formula Drift championship. Just 50% of the land is considered viable for development due to environmental factors, MyCentralJersey reports, and the proposal would supposedly leave behind space for some kind of motorsport facility, as well as other commercial and retail uses.
This is not Raceway Park’s first brush with redevelopment. Back in 2023, the Old Bridge Township Council attempted to move forward with a plan to rezone a portion of the land for single-family homes. The track sued the town, with Raceway Park’s attorney at the time telling MyCentralJersey that the “ordinance is looking to rob them of their use of that property and basically zone it into disuse.” A small public airport also sits beside the track.
The two parties have been in negotiations since to reach a new agreement, which brings us to the present. At a meeting last month, the township planning board voted to “begin the process of determining whether the raceway qualifies as an ‘area in need of redevelopment,'” according to NJ.com.
New Jersey’s Fair Share Housing Development Plan calls for 146,000 “affordable housing units” across the state over the next decade, whether through rehabilitation or new construction; Old Bridge is tapped to contribute 673 homes. It’s worth noting that the township doesn’t appear to be excited about the task of finding the room. Board members called the obligation “unfair,” per NJ.com, and one was quoted as saying, “If it were up to me, I’d put up a ‘closed for building’ sign in this town. It’s disgusting. If we don’t comply, we get sued. So in the end, we really don’t have a choice.”
Perhaps even more frustrating, under New Jersey guidelines, only 15% to 25% of units within an “inclusionary” residential development are typically designated as “affordable,” according to MyCentral Jersey, while the rest may be sold at market rate.
In 2023, Atco Dragway, another long-running drag racing venue in the state about 50 miles southwest of Englishtown, closed after a 63-year history. The Drive has reached out to Raceway Park for comment, and will update this story if we hear back.
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Backed by a decade of covering cars and consumer tech, Adam Ismail is a Senior Editor at The Drive, focused on curating and producing the site’s slate of daily stories.
