Nascar Hall Of Fame
NASCAR is set to have a NASCAR Hall of Fame which will honor NASCAR drivers, crew chiefs and owners who have achieved greatness, as well as other people who have made significant contributions to the sport.
Charlotte North Carolina will be the home for the Hall of Fame, selected in 2006 as part of NASCAR’s commitment to establish this significant memorial to the sport. Ground breaking on the $160 million hall took place on January 26, 2007 and it will open no later than March of 2010, with the initial honored class inducted later that same year.
The NASCAR Hall of Fame will bolster Charlotte’s economy with new tourism and with jobs. The Hall of Fame won’t be alone as NASCAR also plans to open a 19 story NASCAR Plaza in March, 2009.
The Hall of Fame offices, NASCAR digital media and the licensing division will all be housed in this 390,000 square foot building. Richard Petty joined Dale Inman to bestow on the Hall the first item it will house, which is the car Petty drove to 27 wins in 1967, a Plymouth Belvedere.
Charlotte is building the NASCAR Hall of Fame and will own it. But the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority will manage the facility. Winston Kelley has been named as the first NASCAR Hall of Fame Executive Director. A design firm known all over the world, Pei, Cobb, Freed & Partners designed the facility. Actual construction has been handled by a company from Charlotte called Little Diversified Architectural Consulting.
The exhibits themselves will be overseen by Ralph Applebaum Associates and lighted by a well known lighting company called Technical Artistry.
It was about time the NASCAR Hall of Fame was built. Stock car racing began in the 1920′s, and NASCAR was founded in 1948 there’s a lot of history for people to visit at the Hall of Fame. NASCAR is linked to bootlegging, for which small fast cars had to be used to transport the illegal whiskey, and early races were created for aspiring bootleg drivers to show off their skills and cars.
Charlotte was selected as the host for the NASCAR Hall of Fame for a number of reasons.
- Stock car racing’s roots are in North Carolina.
- A lot of well known NASCAR drivers hail from North Carolina.
- People call the surrounding area NASCAR Valley because so many motosports teams are based there and they employ so many people 73% of the nation’s motorsports workers, in fact.
- Half of the people who live in the USA live 500 miles or less from the greater Charlotte area.
There is no doubt that any fan of NASCAR will want to visit the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
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