Canadian Motor Speedway

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Canadian Motor Speedway was a proposed motorsports park that was planned to be built in Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada. The development would have been located on an 821 acres (332 hectares) adjacent to the Queen Elizabeth Way highway. It was planned to consist of a 1.2 kilometre (¾ mile) progressive bank oval and 3.2 kilometres (2.0 miles) road course. With 65,000 seats and 40 suites, Canadian Motor Speedway would have been the largest speedway in Canada and the second-largest sporting venue, in terms of seating capacity, in the country (behind only Montreal's Olympic Stadium). Its proposed location had proximity to a large market area, being 6.4 kilometres (4.0 miles) from the Canada/USA border with Buffalo, New York, and 17 kilometres (11 miles) from Niagara Falls.

It was a hybrid development with aspects that would have made it unique from other racetracks. It was planned to have two race courses as well as Research and Development, Light Industrial, and Commercial areas on the site. A specific objective was to develop relevance for motorsports through the initiatives of the Research and Development area, which concentrates on advancing fuels, materials and power train technologies, while augmenting environmental sustainability through a bio diversity initiative.

Further expected benefits from the development included providing a strong employment base, with a projected 730 operational jobs for the Speedway, R&D, Light Industrial and Commercial zones and 1,200 construction jobs over 21 months for the speedway and road course. Events were expected to draw patrons from areas outside of the Niagara region to increase the number of tourists to the area.

Daily activities pitched as part of the project included R&D testing, road course track days (for car and motorcycle clubs), driver experience sessions on the oval, corporate team-building seminars/track time, charity fundraiser events, motocross and kart practice sessions, and snowmobile sessions in season. The Speedway was expected to feature 10 summer weekend Special Events, under a permit from the Town of Fort Erie.

None of Canadian Motor Speedway's developers could be contacted from 2018 to 2020. The speedway had been given until 2020 to begin construction before the government revokes the zoning privileges necessary for the project to go forth; its developers emerged weeks before that deadline to request an extension, citing a change in financial backing. After the extension was granted, then allowed to expire, the purpose speedway grounds were put up for sale, ending the project.^[1]