San Jose motocross track closing, leaving riders few options

SAN JOSE — The motocross track at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, among the off-road motorcycle racing sport’s few Bay Area courses, is closing after a decade despite desperate attempts to save it.

“It’s just so sad,” said Joseph Jacobs, who spends most weekends there with his wife and four kids. “We’re all just kind of hoping for a Christmas miracle here.”

Chris Stille has run 408MX, located off Tully Road south of downtown, for the past two years, and his outfit bills the fairgrounds course as “one of the absolute, premier Motocross tracks in Northern California.” But his attempts to renegotiate the lease with the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds Management Corporation, which wraps up around the end of the year, have been rebuffed, he said.

“They want us out of there,” Stille said.

Stille added that he was informed by the fairgrounds that the management corporation needs to pull in at least $6,000 an acre in rent. Right now, he pays $5,000 a month in the winter

and $6,500 a month in the summer for the approximately 10-acre space, he said. Insurance rates, he added, were also set to skyrocket.

Even so, Stille said, a private investor stepped forward willing to help the motocross track pay the bills, but the management corporation hasn’t budged.

Greg Mckenna, the potential investor, said he made it clear he was willing to do whatever it would take to keep the place running, whether that means bringing in private security or paying more rent. But the county, he said, isn’t interested in having motocross in the area.

“They always seem to try to push back when they get the chance,” Mckenna said. “They don’t really give a reason.”

“The decision was made to not have motocross out here in the near future,” said Mary Bartlett, executive director of the fairgrounds. “The contract was up, management chose not to renew it, and that essentially was it.”

It remains unclear what will occupy the space in the future. The immediate plan, Bartlett said, is to level the land.

That bothers Mckenna and other riders.

“I get the fact that if they flatten it and put houses or shopping malls, life goes on, progress happens,” Mckenna said. “But to let it shut down and sit there empty doesn’t make much sense to me.”

Bartlett declined to specify what the management corporation, which reports to the county, might do with the space in the future, but said it was considering several options.

“Sure, if it’s a corporation and there are shareholders, it makes sense, but this is public land,” Jacobs said. “Where are we headed if you’ve got public lands there for the community and you’re trying to turn a profit out of it? It just seems like a moral issue almost.”