NASCAR Nextel Cup driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. is helping design the oval course at the Alabama Motorsports Park, A Dale Earnhardt Jr. Speedway in Prichard. His stepbrother, NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series driver Kerry Earnhardt, is in charge of the bass fishing lake.

Both are among the feature venues planned for a $624 million motorsports and entertainment complex on 3,000 acres along Alabama 158 off Interstate 65 in Mobile County.

“Kerry is a fishing maniac,” said Rick Skelton, an Atlanta-based investor in the park and himself a driver and car owner in the Grand American Road Racing Association. “The oval track is Dale Jr.’s baby.”

Investors have been refining the master plan for the motorsports park, according to former Mobile Mayor Mike Dow, president of the investor group, Gulf Coast Entertainment LLC.

There will be four race tracks: a 7/10-mile, lighted oval track; a 3/8-mile dirt track; a 3½-mile road course; and a quarter-mile drag strip. Investors are working with HOK Sport of Kansas City, Kan., a national designer of sports facilities.

The site includes 2.1 miles of frontage on Alabama 158, much of which will be developed with retail, restaurants, several hotels and gas stations, according to the investors. A lifestyle center with entertainment venues will be also be built in the park.

“The track is the magnet,” Dow said.

All four of the tracks will be built at the same time, with construction starting in early 2008, he said, and the tracks should be operating by the first quarter of 2010.

Alabama Press Register

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