Save Weymouth Speedway - Update

[Save Weymouth Speedway]

Local businessman Harold Doonan and his consortium still await a reply from landlords Morgan Sindall six weeks after contacting them to try and negotiate a lease on the Wessex Raceway and save the Weymouth Wildcats Speedway team from extinction.

 

With revenues in excess of £1.5 billion,(figures from company website), Morgan Sindall remain tight lipped regarding any future plans of the stadium. Wessex Delivery Partnership LLP have stated that they have no plans to lease the track for motorsport activities in the foreseeable future but, sickeningly in the context of this sustained campaign of inaction, the raceway remains empty.

 

Harold Doonan, who heads up the consortium trying to save the club from permanent extinction is frustrated by the lack of communication from Morgan Sindall. He’s calling on the local council to get behind the club in its hour of need. “It’s about time the local council stood up for the community who elected them. In 1900 the Sidney Hall was given to the parish of Holy Trinity by Sir John Groves in memory of his son, Sidney, who had died in 1895. Without any consultation to the local community, the building was knocked down and replaced with Asda supermarket. There are sixty years of sporting history on the site at the Wessex Stadium, and yet the likelihood of it being developed looks ever more probable. Weymouth is surrounded by the sea on three sides which makes it virtually impossible to find another location that will be suitable for a speedway track, and the fact that there is a perfectly suitable one already in existence beggars belief.”

 

Builders merchant Doonan added, “We have lost an amenity which brought visitors to the town and provided a great source of family entertainment for the locals too. The new bypass may bring more visitors to the town but there’s not going to be much for sports fans to watch - particularly if the football club go the same way as the speedway! I feel it’s time for the powers that be to say that this land will remain as a sporting area in perpetuity and so eliminate the persistent threat of development which forever hangs over the stadium. “

 

On the subject of the possible relocation of the stadium, which may or may not include a speedway track as part of the land deal with Wessex Delivery Partnership Doonan noted, “What’s the point of moving the stadium from its current home and having to relocate it just so they can build houses on it? Why not build the houses on the land where the relocated stadium would go, surely that is common sense?”

 

Anyone wishing to make their feelings known are being encouraged to write to their local ward councillor and also to the Conservative Member of Parliament who represents Weymouth: Mr Richard Drax MP, House of Commons, London SW1A 2PW.

 

Further details regarding a possible peaceful demonstration by local people at the grand opening of the Weymouth “Community Fire Station” - recently built by Morgan Sindall to “serve the community” - will follow shortly.