Groundbreaking scheduled for Portland track

UPDATE Editor's Note: The Winston Salem Journal article author titled it 'Groundbreaking scheduled for Portland track.' Gardner's project is actually located in Boardman, which is a city of 2,800 in sparsely populated Eastern Oregon. In fact, the entire county (Morrow) only has a population of just under 11,000. Boardman is over 160 miles away from Portland, so to call it a 'Portland track' is a serious stretch.

10/26/07 If NASCAR executives are looking for a track in the Pacific Northwest for expansion of their Nextel Cup series, Bill Gardner might be the man to talk to.

Gardner, the “Gard" in DiGard, the historic NASCAR teams from the 1970s and early 1980s that carried Darrell Waltrip for a while, is working on what is proposed as a $100 million speedway to be called Pacific Northwest Motorsports Park near Portland, Ore.

Groundbreaking was set for this week, with a number of local and state politicians on hand. It was unknown if Oregon governor Ted Kulongoski would be there.

The track, apparently to be similar in style to Virginia International Raceway in Danville, would include a six-mile road course in several configurations. It is to be completed by the fall of 2008. Winston Salem Journal