A petition seeking to remove auto racing from the Nashville Fairgrounds appears to have cleared a key hurdle.
A broad coalition known as “Restore Our Fairgrounds” says it gathered 74,905 signatures in support of removing the speedway.
Gathering those names is one step in the process of revising the Metro Charter. Currently, the charter enshrines auto racing as a required activity at the fairgrounds. Voters approved that arrangement in 2011.
The latest campaign seeks to undo that protection, and to instead create affordable housing and green space at the roughly 25-acre speedway site.
Learn more: Racing or housing? Fairgrounds debate reaches Metro’s charter commission
The next step is a petition review by the Davidson County Election Commission. If the petition is certified — with at least 40,193 signatures — that will send a new ballot measure to Nashville voters in August 2027.
“We feel confident that the petition contains more than enough signatures of Nashville voters to warrant certification,” John Spragens, a co-founder of Citizens Against Racetrack Expansion (CARE), wrote in a statement Friday.
In the meantime, there’s been a proposal to rebuild and greatly expand the speedway, and various efforts in opposition, including vocal concerns from neighbors.
This Is Nashville: Our racing roots
The deep divide over the fairgrounds has included allegations this summer about how the petition drive was conducted, and about the honesty of messaging by the competing sides. A counter-campaign to “decline to sign” included a push to have people remove their names from the petition if they felt they were tricked into signing.
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