Alabama Motorsports Park investors give land for proposed Mobile County track back to bank

MOBILE, Al.
Compass Bank now owns much of the land that was slated for a Mobile County auto racing complex after investors deeded the property to the lender to avoid foreclosure, according to court records.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.

The former landowners are part of Gulf Coast Entertainment, a Mobile-based group of 30 investors that planned a $640 million motor sports project on more than 2,000 acres in Prichard, Saraland and Mobile County.
It's another setback for a project first announced in September 2006 with the backing of one of the country's most high-profile race car drivers, Dale Earnhardt Jr.
After a tug-of-war search involving sites in Mobile and Baldwin counties, the park landed off Ala. 158 and Interstate 65, with most of the land in Prichard. The icing on the cake was the name: the Alabama Motorsports Park, a Dale Earnhardt Jr. Speedway.
Since that time, the project has been significantly scaled back -- from 6 tracks to 3 -- and Earnhardt dropped out in fall 2009.
Current plans include a 75,000-seat oval track, a road course and a karting track, along with an RV park and entertainment venues.
Court records indicated that the mortgages were in difficulty as early as May 2010, when the bank negotiated a forbearance agreement involving millions in loans on a handful of separate tracts to delay foreclosure proceedings.
According to court records, Rick Edwards, G.C. Outlaw III, George T. Grau, John McInnis III, and Rick Skelton, a race car driver living in Atlanta, deeded land back to Compass on Sept. 23.
McInnis' family owns The McInnis Company. Based in Orange Beach, it built the Foley Beach Express toll road with other partners. McInnis is also an owner of the landmark bar, Flora-Bama, in Perdido Key, Fla.
Skelton was a partner in the failed Bon Secour Village, a mixed-use development on more than 900 acres along the Intracoastal Waterway in Gulf Shores. Most of that property was foreclosed on, then sold by the lender last year.
Mike Dow, spokesman for Gulf Coast Entertainment and former Mobile mayor, said the investor group continues to work on the project. He said Gulf Coast Entertainment has a letter of intent from one prospect who wants to develop the site, but he would not say if that plan includes a racetrack.
"These are complex times for banks, investors and landowners," Dow said. "The bottom line is, as long as we have the ability to move forward and develop that property, we're happy with that."
The landowners named in the court record remain investors in the project, Dow said.
Edwards said that deeding the property to the bank is "the best thing we need to do as landowners.
"And the banks are doing what they have to do to clean the books up," he said. "The deal is still alive. We're still optimistic that everything is going to work out."