Quiet Calhan is making noise about racetrack

CALHAN - Carol Lawson feels like El Paso County is selling pieces of her sanity for $345 a pop.

As the county fairground’s closest neighbor, Lawson said she was sent into a full-fledged anxiety attack by the unrelenting sound of stock cars circling the El Paso County Speedway three weeks ago.

“The noise was all over me,” she said. “I couldn’t get rid of it. It was the intense feeling of claustrophobia.”

The races started in May and will run through September as part of the El Paso County Fair Board’s solution to heavy fair budget cuts in recent years: Expand fairground activities to include more “revenue-producing events.”

The races have drawn about 1,000 people to the fairgrounds every other Saturday night. Race promoters like Allan Davis rake in $10 per adult.

But the actual amount the board takes in per event — $345 — makes little business sense to the fairground’s neighbors, especially considering that the county poured more than $10,000 into preparing the fairgrounds for the races.

“I’m mortified that they would have sold our wellbeing out here for that amount of money,” said Lawson.

On Lawson’s back porch as Saturday night’s races began, the noise level was akin to sitting on the porch of a Colorado Springs house lining Powers Boulevard — not deafening but certainly noticeable.

But a main reason people like Lawson and the eightmember Dayley family live in Calhan is that there isn’t a Powers Boulevard, or anything close to it.

Fair board members say concessions have been made to appease concerns of Calhan residents.

The racetrack is hosed down to limit dust, and all race entrants must use mufflers. No car should be louder than 95 decibels, and all of the races thus far have ended before the Calhan-imposed 10 p.m. curfew.

“There are a lot of quiet Saturday nights,” Fair board chairwoman Martie Stott said of the races’ twicemonthly schedule.

But on race nights, the noise level depends on the type of cars circling the track — muffler or not.

On the night of Lawson’s anxiety attack, members of the fair board were traversing Calhan taking sound measurements. Early on in the four-hour event, noise levels near Lawson’s house reached about 80 decibels. But as the evening went on, Lawson said, racers unveiled the louder and louder crowd-pleasers.

In Lawson and her neighbors’ month of trying to find a sympathetic ear among elected officials and county employees, they say, they’ve found just one ally — County Commissioner Douglas Bruce.

Bruce said he finds the county hypocritical for allowing noise from the speedway to far exceed the usual 50-decibel cap imposed on county residents.

“The issue to me is, is this an appropriate noise level or are we forcing the neighbors to absorb the cost for the county's money-making?” Bruce said last week.

But as these neighbors consider how to stop the races — what they say is the only solution — their anger over how they say the county slipped the event plans past them only increases.

Public notice was given in the form of the County Fairground’s Master Plan Update. In that plan, a line planning to “reestablish ¼ mile dirt track,” is the only reference to the car races.

Glenn Dayley said the fair board “used the tactic that the fair would be shut down,” without the master plan.

“We enjoy the fair there, that’s not the issue,” Dayley said. “It is just these races.”

The master plan was approved by El Paso County commissioners in January. Before approval, Bruce said there was not a discussion of how stock car races would affect Calhan residents.

Lawson says a neighbor is selling out and moving to Teller County.

Another installed a home theater in his basement, only to find it didn’t successfully drown out the noise, she said.

Others, including Lawson, plan on heading out of town on nights the races move in.

When the races started, one of Dayley’s neighbors suggested suing the county.

At first, Dayley didn’t support that. But the idea gets more appealing, he says, as he discovers more Calhan residents who don’t like the races and encounters more unsympathetic officials.

“I haven’t met anyone who lives in Calhan who likes the races,” Dayley said, adding that many of the 900 residents are afraid to speak up. “Didn’t somebody on the fair board go, ‘Hey, there’s a neighborhood over there’? That’s just crazy to me.”