CompetitionPlus.com reported on April 21 that Bandimere Speedway will close at the end of its 2023 race season.

Seeing the curtain drop on the Morrison, Colo. facility near Denver is hard to imagine for many racers and fans. The Bandimere family has been running the facility since its opening in 1958.

The facility has been a mainstay on NHRA’s Division V calendar and home to the NHRA national event – the Mile-High Nationals for more than 40 years. The final Mile-High Nationals is set for July 14-16.

Tami Bandimere, part of Bandimere Speedway’s executive team, said there’s nothing in stone right now about relocating Bandimere Speedway.

“If things go together, yes; if things don’t go together, no,” Tami said. “There’s just not a lot of places where you can drop an airport. This is our 65th anniversary, and so we are going to kill it this year. We are super excited for the opportunity to be able to go out on top. The fact that God has allowed us to be caretakers of this property and the facility for 65 years is just a remarkable thing. We have a full schedule, and we are running the entire year. It definitely will be the last Mile-High Nationals here at the racetrack.”

Tami told CompetitionPlus.com that Bandimere Speedway has been sold to a company that will utilize the land for something other than drag racing.

“It is a roller-coaster of emotions,” Tami said. “Once the highway (E470) came through 33 years ago, I think we all knew, not just us as a family, but everybody knew that our days were numbered because of the fact once you build a major highway, it will not take long for development to encroach. You have to start thinking in that direction. We kind of joked for the last 30 years that we have had a five-year plan, and that’s not untrue. You say to yourself if we are here in five years, here is what we are going to do. If we are here for another five years, here is what we are going to do. We kept going, and it was like, ‘Thank you for 45 years.’ ‘Thank you for 50 years.’ It was that kind of thing.

“The fact that we actually made it this far is pretty remarkable. Not patting ourselves on the back, but we have worked really hard to be good neighbors and contribute to the community and be those people that don’t just tie up traffic several times a year and don’t just mess with people’s sleeping patterns on a six-month out of the year basis. We actually give something back. I think that bought us a little bit of time. We are now at that point where it is time to move on and find something else or not find something else. You have options. We are trying to play out everything that comes our way.”

The most significant improvement to Bandimere Speedway was a $4 million renovation in 1988, and that year the Mile-High Nationals were not held.

“We came back in 1989, and that’s when we were able to start our incredible partnership with the Chrysler Corporation,” Tami said. “That has lasted the entire time, and that’s a blessing.”

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Prior to the 2008 season, the entire track was redone, creating an all-concrete racing surface. During this process, a proprietary track cooling system was installed that drops the surface temperature of the racing surface by up to 20 degrees for improved racing action.

The Mile-High Nationals also were not run in 2020 because of COVID-19 restrictions in Colorado.

“Over the years, you can imagine when the highway came through and the visibility was there, this property became a lot more valuable,” Tami said. “We had a lot of people who came to us and said, ‘Hey, you want to sell that. I’m really interested.’ You might not know this, but we have never had permanent water or sewer on this facility, and as soon as people know that, they kind of go, ‘Let me think about it, and I will get back to you.”

“It comes and goes, and we never get excited about anything, really. It has happened before, and it will probably happen again, and this time it continued to move forward.”

Bandimere Speedway has races running until Oct. 29 this season, and by year’s end, the family will no longer own the facility.

“Thank goodness,” Tami said about the new owners not using it as a drag racing venue. “I think that would be really hard, especially for our family.”

Bandimere Speedway joins a list of recent dragstrips to close on the NHRA national circuit. Englishtown, N.J., closed in 2018; Commerce, Ga. (near Atlanta) in 2022; Houston in 2022 and Phoenix, Ariz., in 2023.

“Our family is always working in a faith mode,” Tami said. “We knew that we wouldn’t be here forever. We have said that this property is God’s property, which allows us not only to run a business with integrity and in the best way possible but also it allows us to hold it loosely, knowing that it was never ours, to begin with. We were never owners. We were caretakers, and our time for taking care of this particular piece of property is done.”