Top-fuel drag racing could come to the Downtown Cleveland’s lakefront thanks to a new company Shore-to-Roar-to-Shore that responded to a request for qualifications from Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration regarding the reuse of Burke Lakefront Airport (WikiCommons). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Plans for new use of air strip praised
In response to a recent request for qualifications (RFQ), Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration has awarded Shore-to-Roar-to-Shore LLC a bid to repurpose the 450-acre, city-owned Burke Lakefront Airport as a drag strip for professional top-fuel dragster and funny-car racing.
However, plans for the project which could include retaining some airport operations in between sporadic racing events, especially during Cleveland’s cold-weather months from August to June, will be the subject of a follow-on design-review process at the City Planning Commission.
Also, the proposed drag strip would have be approved by Cleveland City Council, the Cleveland Board of Zoning Appeals, the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, the Ohio Department of Development, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the National Hot Rod Association.
“I done did get a whoop-whoop from the mayor when I told him our plans for your Burke Lakefront Airport up there in the big, bad city,” said ‘Big Daddy’ Dan Cowlips, president of Shore-to-Roar-to-Shore, in a telephone interview. “But when he asked me if I would offer parking for recreational vehicles, I told him we ain’t running no NASCAR race here.”
NEOtrans sent e-mails to multiple people in the Bibb administration seeking more information but didn’t get a response prior to publication of this article. The city has been trying to close Burke and says the annual Labor Day air show was the airport’s second-biggest economic driver after being a dump for crud dredged from the bottom of the Cuyahoga River.
Burke Lakefront Airport’s main runway, at right, totals 7,000 feet including a buffer at the west end. That makes it long enough to accommodate two regulation-length drag strips starting from the center (Google).
Based in the southern Ohio village of Knockemstiff, Cowlips noted that Burke’s 7,000-foot-long main runway makes it perfect for conversion to at least one dragstrip and possibly two. He said, while the race portion of a drag strip is typically a quarter-mile-long, the shut-down area after the finish line where vehicles slow brings a drag strip’s total length to 3,500 feet.
“We can plop a couple of them Christmas trees (the drag race electronic starting light system) right in the middle there and run races simul…, sima…, uh, at the same time, east and west,” he explained. “And the best part is if the car’s chute don’t open, they can land in the lake water and go for a backstroke on a nice hot summer’s day.”
He was asked if Burke’s prior use as the IndyCar Cleveland Grand Prix, held one weekend each year from 1982-2007 and dubbed “Roar by the Shore,” inspired his proposal to the city. But he said his group had no interest in that type of car racing.
“They can kiss my bricks,” Cowlips replied. “IndyCar is for the wine and cheese crowd. We race hemi’s like a bullet from a varmint rifle, not that left-turn, namby-pamby stuff. And since we’s doing a double drag-strip plan, the mayor suggested the name Shore-to-Roar-to-Shore.”
Cowlips was initially hesitant to use that name, saying it was far too convoluted for any reasonable, everyday branding initiative and should be reserved only for plannerspeak, governmental efforts like tax-increment financing programs. But he embraced it because he said it might improve his chances of winning the RFQ.
END
