The sound of construction equipment will ring in the New Year at Callahan Speedway just north of the town.

Then as spring turns to summer, the sound of cars competing for the best times should replace the grumble of bulldozers at the new eighth-mile Hicken Power Dragstrip.

Groundbreaking is set for noon Tuesday on Northeast Florida’s first drag strip since 2017, set to be built next to a 13-year-old go-kart complex at 543455 U.S. 1.

Track owner and Callahan businessman David Hicken said he hopes to personally test the track “as soon as the concrete is finished,” after years of planning it. He hopes to be “rocking and rolling” with racing by spring.

“My contractors tell me we will probably be up and running by May or June,” Hicken said. “I get calls all the time since the first time, a long time ago, when I got the OK from the county. There’s a lot of excitement, and I can’t tell you honestly how many people have started building something to race.

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“Of course, when you go over a four-year period of time, it kind of gets stale. There’s still excitement, but you can tell people just so many times that it is still being engineered.”

Shortage of drag strips

There are no drag strips or racetracks right now in the Jacksonville area. The closest one is the National Hot Rod Association‘s 54-year-old Gainesville Raceway, a quarter-mile track that is 74 miles from Jacksonville.

Closer to home, Green Cove Dragway was open from 2013 to early 2017, sanctioned by the International Hot Rod Association. The ⅛-mile drag strip was built on an old runway at the former Lee Field Naval Air Station, a World War II aviation training facility at what is now the Reynolds Industrial Park. But its site was taken over to store cars.

Jacksonville also had a ⅛-mile drag strip on Pecan Park Road. Jax Raceways opened in 1969, then shut its drag strip and oval dirt track permanently in 2004 to make way for development.

Recently, two proposals for motorsports parks, with curving tracks designed for racing, have been announced.

One would be next to Palatka Municipal Airport, a 440-acre facility spearheaded by NASCAR and Trans-Am racing driver Scott Lagasse Jr. and his father, Scott Lagasse Sr. They plan a  multiturn racetrack for cars, a smaller one for go-karts, meeting facilities and even a hotel.

Groundbreaking on the first phase should be in the first quarter of next year. The total cost is estimated at about $200 million over 10 years.

Then a 600-acre North Florida Motorsports Park has been announced in Nassau County on undeveloped land along County Road 108 west of Interstate 95. Indy 500 winner Bobby Rahal, who has a home in Ponte Vedra Beach, is a business partner and would design the track. 

Planning for drag strip

Hicken is a former drag racer himself, having competed on motorcycles all over the country, including on tracks long gone from the Jacksonville area. The idea to add the asphalt and concrete drag strip to the racetracks they have for go-karts, motorcycles and radio-controlled racers came about four years ago.

He currently operates a busy ⅕-mile racetrack for go-kart racing, its surface made from red clay imported from Georgia. Open since 2010 by Hicken and James Wofford, the oval track is near the Northeast Florida Fairgrounds off U.S. 1, with grandstands, track facilities and a large parking area to the south.

The ⅛-mile, two-lane track will join a smaller motorcycle racing course and one for radio-controlled car racing. But it has taken four years to get the major permits to begin construction, and even now, there’s still some pre-construction meets to get done, he said.

“After that, we go to the digging,” he said. “It could be right after the first of the year we will be doing everything.”

Hicken said the track will cost an estimated $1.7 million, paid for by his family, sponsors and other sources. He said that the track will run along the west side of the property near the existing tree line. The whole two-lane track will be a ½-mile long.

That will include a 60-foot-long concrete burnout and staging area for the cars, then the ⅛-mile asphalt track for racing, with a shutdown area and a dirt area of about 600 feet for emergency stopping. Concrete barriers will flank the track for safety, with side roads so racers can return to the starting line.

Fans will watch from ballpark bleachers, with plans for a concession stand, with further improvements planned at the drag strip site.

While the track is not near many homes, all race cars will have to have mufflers to keep noise levels down, Hicken said. But once it opens, he envisions the hot rod and classic car clubs in Northeast Florida will rumble in for the racing and more.

Hicken said he is still working on which drag racing organization he will pair with to organize events.

The drag strip already got approval from the Nassau County Conditional Use and Variance Board, as well as the St. Johns River Water Management District. Then the original planned site for the track had to be moved due to wetlands. It now will be parallel to the go-kart track’s front straight.

Hicken felt at times as though he was starting over with the delays, but now, he said, he sees the “light at the end of the tunnel.”