(Above) Driver Shane van Gisbergen competes in a NASCAR Cup Series race at Grant Park on July 6 (AP Photo/Erin Hooley).

By Don DeBat

Jul. 14, 2025 – Whether you love NASCAR or hate it, now is the time to start planning to move this redneck racing show out of Grant Park to save Chicago’s Game, 16-inch slow pitch softball, and to promote other more profitable events.

“While NASCAR has brought Chicago business, tourists, and a spectacle unique to sports culture, it has also brought noise, disruption, and road closures,” noted 2nd Ward Alderman Brian Hopkins, who along with four other alderpersons – Bill Conway (34th Ward), Pat Dowell (3rd Ward), Brendan Reilly (42nd Ward), and Lamont Robinson (4th Ward) – is not a fan of the event.

“This past year alone, I heard from numerous 2nd Ward residents whose commutes and daily lives were altered drastically by these street closures,” Hopkins (left) said in a letter to NASCAR officials. “Other large-scale downtown events, whose economic impacts are as much or greater than this event, cause less disruption.”

Hopkins said it is his hope that in the future, the city can create a NASCAR deal that “sufficiently benefits Chicago without putting undue burden on downtown residents and businesses.”

After three years of NASCAR madness, which essentially kicked Grant Park Chicago softball to the curb, the good news is the racing venue now is considering an offer to move its July 4th event to San Diego.

Sixteen-inch softball’s 138-year history started near Grant Park

Time for a history lesson. Sixteen-inch softball was invented in Chicago in 1887, and the first indoor game was played at the Farragut Boat Club at Lake Park & 31st Street, only a couple of miles from Grant Park.

(Right) The first softball team in action in Grant Park, circa 1897. Photo by X.O. Howe.

So, softball lovers are cheering any plan to move the annual NASCAR event out of Grant Park. Now is the time to stop closing parts of DuSable Lake Shore Drive and major downtown streets, building temporary bleachers, and breathing exhaust fumes every Independence Day weekend, they say.

To raise tax revenues and help Chicago avoid bankruptcy, city planners should follow the words of legendary Windy City architect and urban planner Daniel H. Burnham: “Make no little plans.”

Planners and politicians should back construction of a permanent NASCAR track for four to six major races a year on 440 acres of the toxic U.S. Steel land along South DuSable Lake Shore Drive south of 79th Street in the long-forgotten South Chicago section of the East Side neighborhood.

Now overgrown with weeds and dotted with relics of its industrial past, the U.S. Steel site has been vacant for 30 years and until recently wasn’t high on Alderman Peter Chico’s 10th Ward agenda.

However, 128 acres along the southeast edge of the site has recently been targeted by PsiQuantum, a Silicon Valley firm, and Chicago developer Related Midwest, as the anchor in the Southeast Side research park by the planned Illinois Quantum & Microelectronics Park at 8080 South DuSable Lake Shore Drive.

(Left) Rendering of the Illinois Quantum & Microelectronics Park. The 128-acre campus is planned as a hub for quantum computing and advanced microelectronics research and development. The north end of the site will be anchored by Advocate Health Care, which is planning a $300 million, 53-bed hospital on 23 acres.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker is an advocate for building a major quantum computer facility in Chicago, and the city would benefit greatly if anything positive happened on vacant South Works land, which has had several failed startups announced for the acreage over the past decade.

The city has already spent $60 million to bring in Route 41 (South DuSable Lake Shore Drive) and create Steelworkers Park and Park 566 on the site, but most of the land sits empty.

A big problem is the South Works site has serious environmental concerns that have blocked residential developers for decades and need to be addressed. Layers of slag, toxic waste caused by steelmaking, is buried underground and would need to be remediated or capped.

So, a permanent, concrete-paved NASCAR racetrack, paid for and leased by the racing giant, might be better long-term use for a major section of the site on weekends for six to eight annual race events.

The proposed NASCAR track, which could run for two or three miles around the perimeter of the Southeast Side research park, likely would not interfere with the weekday work for computer scientists at the microelectronics facility.

Imagine the TV skyline views of the Loop and downtown Chicago from the racetrack, which would have permanent stands and elite seating just like the arena provided at Grant Park, without traffic congestion and displacement of softball leagues and other summer park events.

Or just build a casino

Here are this writer’s other whimsical proposals to help anchor the South Chicago section of the East Side neighborhood as a major tourist attraction:

• Once the racing mecca is established, NASCAR could invite participants from the Road American races, currently run in Elkhart, Wisconsin, to participate and use the track. Now in its 70th year of racing, Road America currently sponsors a series of 50 motorsport events ranging from Formula 1 European and American sports cars to muscle cars and motorcycles. Maybe it is time for Road America to show off its talents in Chicago?

• With Indiana only minutes away by car, the track also could be utilized on weekends for other blue-collar sports such as drag racing and demolition derbies when NASCAR is out of town.

• Racing investors likely will jump at the chance to build the Chicago NASCAR Museum on land near the track, along with a 200-room South Works hotel and Country & Western concert venue for after-race entertainment and frolicking fans.

• Since the U.S. Steel site likely belonged to Native American Indians originally, why not toss in the land for the South Works Casino and plenty of parking? The casino will help Chicago and Illinois, which generated more than $1.7 billion in tax revenue last year, lock in its place as the third largest gaming market behind Las Vegas and Atlantic City.

• There still will be enough acreage left over to build a small airport, similar to the city’s long-gone private Meigs Field, to fly in music concert fans and politicians. Why not name the new airport after Richard M. Daley, who razed Meigs?

(Right) Meigs Field on April 6, 2003, a few days after its runway was closed. Wikimedia Commons.

All this activity will give Choose Chicago, the city’s official tourism organization, plenty of ammo to attract tens of thousands of tourists to the Windy City.