Omaha for Future IndyCar Circuit?

"RoboRed "The road to hell is paved with overturned Vanduras"" (robored61389) 06/16/2016 at 12:01 • Filed to: IndyCar, speculation, future, street, hype, probably a little more hype than this deserves

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This past weekend I managed to hear a very, very interesting rumor on a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (at 33:22-35:04 timestamps) that North Downtown Omaha is being scouted as a potential location for an IndyCar street circuit in the future. I haven’t been able to find anything to support this rumor apart from what was spoken on the show and that it’s at the “maybe” stage, and a profile page I found of a business broker who apparently has a history with Omaha, a passion for motorsports, brokered an Indycar sponsorship in the past, and there’s a line at the end of the profile that says he is “ !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ”. If this rumor is true though, it would be, quite frankly, totally awesome .

I don’t have much of a clue how they’d lay it out if Omaha is picked and I don’t know Indycar’s requirements for tracks and track safety. I’m quite certain they’d have it be running past TD Ameritrade Park and the CenturyLink Center, though.

Sooooooo it’s speculation time.

According to Wikipedia, the boundaries for North Downtown are I-480, 17th St, Seward St, and Riverfront Dr (as highlighted by my amazing MSPainted screenshot of the area here). There’s a plenty of ground to cover there.

There’s quite a few stretches of road that have medians (particularly Abbott Dr and through the CenturyLink Center), but I suppose those could be removed if the city really wanted. Something I seem to have heard a lot is that the city wants development along Riverfront. It looks like there might be room to establish a pit lane and garages there as well as stands if they want to develop/redevelop the area. Riverfront Dr is rather narrow and has no exits to any larger stretches of road in the middle due to railroad tracks, though the former issue could be changed by widening the road. If included, it would likely be a long fast straight until Abbott to the north, and S 8th St or the southeast CenturyLink parking lot. There is possibility of a chicane in the northern part of Riverfront and through the Lewis and Clark Landing building (but that’s really close to the building).

Speaking of the CenturyLink parking lot, there’s a ton of parking lot space in North Downtown, and Meca Dr plus the east/southeast CenturyLink parking lot area there would be a great wide open space to run through and modify to add extra turns. For most of the other parking lots, they’d need to do some modifications and get rid of the concrete posts at the entrances. I also suspect they’d want the course to run through 10th St (which would make the walkway from the Hilton to the CenturyLink Center a great observation spot). It looks like might be ehough room in the valet area in front of the Center to use as a pit lane/garages, but those trees would have to go.

Something I’m worried about is the railroads. There are two lines that run through the area: one across southern Riverfront and under Abbott, and one that runs through Cass near the onramp and through Mike Fahey, N 13th, and Cuming around TD Ameritrade. I don’t know how often those lines are used, and there would definitely need to be communication with Union Pacific (at least) if railways are going to be blocked off. I also don’t expect them to be using any roads that have onramps/offramps to I-480 nearby for safety reasons.

Some other notes/observations:

I wish it wasn’t so, but there’s not a lot of curves around the area like Belle Isle, Toronto Exhibition Place, or St. Petersburg, so this circuit would be mostly high-speed-long-straights and/or full of 90-degree turns.

There’s a bit of surface change around the 10th St/Capitol Ave intersection (uses bricks in some areas), so that could be slightly interesting. And there’s a couple railroad crossings.

Capitol Ave might be usable to get to Riverfront, but it would need a bit of reworking at the underpass.

Most of the area is flat, but there’s some minor elevation in the north around Abbott, the south at the 10th St/Capitol Ave area, and Riverfront has noticeable changes at the north and south, with a gradual change in-between.

The TD Ameritrade parking lot looks like it would be spacious enough to run through.

The ConAgra campus/Heartland of America Park area looks like it would have some fun turns, but that’s not in the North Downtown area, and I doubt there’s any chance of running something there anyways. Buuut just sayin’...

So yeah, that’s my take on it. I’m really hyped and hope they find a way to make this happen. I don’t know if it would happen in August 2017 like the guy was suspecting, but it’s doable within a couple years. Here’s another amazing MSPaint pic of the roads I suspect they’re looking at. Red indicates my one of my configuration ideas, blue indicates other roads I expect them to look at.

Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer > RoboRed "The road to hell is paved with overturned Vanduras" 06/16/2016 at 12:16

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I spy Toronto.

RoboRed "The road to hell is paved with overturned Vanduras" > Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer 06/16/2016 at 12:20

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Definitely seems similar. But like I said, not as many non-90 degree turns naturally available.

Or maybe I’m just in the mentality of trying to force something to work. I’m no professional circuit designer.

Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer > RoboRed "The road to hell is paved with overturned Vanduras" 06/16/2016 at 12:31

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No, I was talking about the lead image.

But personally, I’d extend your red course up a bit in the top left corner, and wiggle through some of the stuff by the river.

CTSenVy > RoboRed "The road to hell is paved with overturned Vanduras" 06/16/2016 at 13:46

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Sure the one time Omaha sports radio doesn’t talk about the Cornhuskser and it’s something I would love to hear I miss it.

I do think Omaha would get behind something like this. If you look at the trend Omaha and the surround areas do a very good job of showing up and supporting events, look at the US National Swim Trials, the NCAA tourneys, and the College World Series.

MuchWagon > RoboRed "The road to hell is paved with overturned Vanduras" 06/16/2016 at 13:51

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not to steal Omaha’s Thunder (ha!) but what ever happened to F1 in NJ - with a view of the NYC skyline?

RoboRed "The road to hell is paved with overturned Vanduras" > MuchWagon 06/16/2016 at 16:04

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From what I heard, financial issues, contractual disputes, and further issues that I’d wager were caused by Bernie Ecclestone being a cock.

Which is a shame, because I’ve been waiting for that race to happen since 2012 and it still hasn’t happened.

CobraJoe > RoboRed "The road to hell is paved with overturned Vanduras" 06/16/2016 at 16:06

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Ok, this would be awesome. I both live in Omaha and was completely bored at the one indy car race I attended (KC Speedway, I hate ovals).

RoboRed "The road to hell is paved with overturned Vanduras" > CTSenVy 06/16/2016 at 16:31

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I almost didn’t catch it myself. I was listening to talk radio because I didn’t care for what was on my usual music stations at the time, stuck to the program because I like hearing about development in the city, and I was just in the middle of parking my car when I heard “IndyCar” mentioned. Now I’m all obsessed n’ stuff.

I agree. I think people would definitely go for this. Street circuits are pretty neat, and TD Ameritrade Park and the Center have been hosting increasingly exciting events lately. What I really wish would happen though is for them to build a track out west that’s capable of hosting something like this.

RoboRed "The road to hell is paved with overturned Vanduras" > Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer 06/16/2016 at 16:40

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Ah, right. I forgot I had looked specifically for a Toronto image for the header. Derp.

I guess the stuff at the top left is an option for a few extra turns, but there’s not a lot there. The stuff by the river is another matter. A lot of that might be private roads (I don’t know), or is just wide pedestrian walkways. In an earlier draft for this post, I mentioned Gallup Dr being a possible road to use (and a run through that bridge over the lake would be kinda neat), but that would cut off all driving traffic to the Gallup campus and I’m not sure if Gallup would be okay with that.

CTSenVy > RoboRed "The road to hell is paved with overturned Vanduras" 06/16/2016 at 16:40

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If they can make a succesful showing with a street course then they may think about building something more permanent. It’s going to be tough to build something now with Kansas Motorspeedway and Iowa being a few hours away, unless they have a solid reason for it.

ceanderson920 > RoboRed "The road to hell is paved with overturned Vanduras" 07/21/2016 at 11:57

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This would be awesome for me! I only live a couple hours from Omaha so I could make a weekend trip for it.

AthomSfere > RoboRed "The road to hell is paved with overturned Vanduras" 07/21/2016 at 20:07

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Just heard about this yesterday on FB, and now Reddit seems to confirm.

The video on FB basically claims this is really close to a done deal for 2018.

The logo:

RoboRed "The road to hell is paved with overturned Vanduras" > AthomSfere 07/21/2016 at 21:55

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*high-pitched noises of Robo-glee*

Where is this video. I must know now.

AthomSfere > RoboRed "The road to hell is paved with overturned Vanduras" 07/22/2016 at 08:21

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Missing... WTF?

I had a share of it, and I found the post but the video is missing...

RoboRed "The road to hell is paved with overturned Vanduras" > AthomSfere 07/22/2016 at 09:30

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I think I might have found it. Was it this one?