Hemond’s Moto-X Park expansion would make it New England’s largest.
MINOT – Deep gullies and the stubble of hundreds of trees currently scar the 25-acre parcel behind Mike Hemond’s home.
Just wait a few months, though. The stumps will be gone and the gullies will be groomed, prepared New England’s longest motocross track.
By fall, Hemond plans to enlarge the Moto-X Park on Route 119 by a factor of four. The current 3,000-foot track will be dwarfed by a 8,500-foot track, occupying one side of a family-owned valley.
“What we have now is great for Maine, small for New England and peanuts for nationals,” Hemond said.
With the new track, Hemond hopes to draw bigger sponsors and eventually, national races.
“We’re just trying to bring enough business to pay the taxes,” said the 19-year-old entrepreneur whose family owns more than 500 acres in Minot.
The business is doing more than that, though. Since Mike and his parents, Donald and Serae, opened the track in 2002, it has grown steadily.
The average race day drew 250 contestants in its first year. In 2005, that average has hit 400, Mike Hemond said. And he has a full-time staff of five.
However, the track has also drawn critics, complaining that the dirt bikes make too much noise. In 2003, complaints prompted the town to hire an expert to measure the sound, to determine whether the track was violating a Minot noise ordinance.
Neighbors argued that their home values might fall. They hired their own sound expert and collected signatures for a petition. Hemond collected more.
Finally, the town’s sound expert decided that the track was noisy, but not loud enough to violate the rules.
Since then, the family has been working on the expansion. Permits followed.
“I have spent $70,000 on paperwork,” Donald Hemond said. In December, the town Planning Board gave its approval. This summer, the Department of Environmental Protection gave its permit.
Then the cutters came, cutting away all but a few trees.
“In a couple of months, this will look like a golf course with a dirt track in the middle,” said Mike Hemond, driving a two-seat, all-terrain vehicle around the track site.
The site looks like the scene of a battle, hidden entirely in a valley and plunging more than 100 feet on a steep grade.
“This is what racers want,” said the younger Hemond. “It’s hilly and fast.”
When it’s complete, the track will zigzag up and down the valley eight times for more than a mile and a half.
Hemond also plans to build bleachers and renovate an old sawmill into a snack bar.
There will be room for racers to stretch out and speed, far more than they can in the tight turns of the current small track.
And it ought to be quiet to neighbors, Mike Hemond figures. Like a natural berm, the valley ought to work as a buffer against the sound.
Staring across the cut land to the still-forested bank on the other side, he said he expects few complaints.
“We own the land for as far as you can see,” he said.
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