If you live anywhere between the Tavern and the top of Smith Hill, you probably heard the news in July: the Aspen Raceway expansion application got pulled before Pitkin County commissioners could vote it down. Neighbors who spent months writing letters and sitting through overflow seating at the county building treated it as a win. One resident wrote to the Aspen Daily News that the withdrawal proved the power of people can win over the power of money in this valley.
Maybe. But rewind three days before that vote and the same owners had already published a public op-ed making their case directly to residents, along with a website, aspenraceway.com, built to collect the names of supporters. Neither one came down when the application did. Read what the raceway's own land-use consultant said in the meeting where the application was pulled, and the story looks less like an ending and more like a pause. Chris Bendon told commissioners that something will happen with the property, and that it will not stay the same for long. The fight didn't stop. It just moved to a channel the commissioners never had a vote over.
The Afternoon the Commissioners Almost Said No
The July 22 hearing had been building since the property changed hands. Todd Jacobs and Bret Richheimer, who co-own the raceway, bought the 45-acre track in Woody Creek for roughly $17 million in June 2026 and filed an application to redevelop it: a 49,000-square-foot clubhouse split between 17,000 square feet above grade and 32,000 below, expanded vehicle storage, a wastewater treatment facility, 14 employee housing units, and a rewrite of the operating plan that had capped race days at 24 per year since the early 1990s. The new plan removed that cap entirely, added winter track use, and introduced an outdoor shooting range capped at 50 hours a month where none had existed under the original approval.
County staff recommended denial before the hearing even started. Planner Franco Palumbo told commissioners the cumulative impacts of the proposal, not any single piece of it, made the project incompatible with the Woody Creek Master Plan. Around 40 people spoke during two hours of public comment, and the county had to set up overflow seating for the crowd. Commissioner Ted Mahon summarized what he'd heard bluntly: the proposal expanded on every axis, more cars, more hours, more days, more buildings, more emissions.
Commissioner Patti Clapper had already begun moving a motion to approve the staff's denial resolution when Jacobs interjected to withdraw the application instead. Commissioners approved the withdrawal unanimously, which let the owners avoid a formal denial on the record and keep their options open for a future filing.
"We will take all this into consideration. Something will happen with the property. It won't stay the same for long." — Chris Bendon, BendonAdams, speaking for the raceway's owners after the withdrawal
That is not the language of a company walking away.
Fifty Years Quiet, Then Not
Part of what made the July hearing feel so charged is that the track has operated in Woody Creek since 1963, back when Colorado had just banned public-road racing and a group of local enthusiasts needed somewhere else to run their cars. For most of six decades it stayed a low-profile private club, tucked on a plateau above the neighborhood and below White Star Ranches, closer to a gravel mine than to anyone's front porch. Longtime residents describe it as background noise they'd made peace with, seasonal, weekend-only, easy to forget about most of the year.
The 2025 listing changed that calculus. The previous owner priced the track at $23 million, and national racing publications picked it up as a novelty: America's highest-altitude road course, available to the right buyer. Jacobs and Richheimer put it under contract, filed their redevelopment application that November, and closed the purchase the following June. Their application didn't propose a return to the track's old rhythm. It proposed a members-only country club with year-round operations, at a scale the surrounding roads and the county's own land use code weren't built to absorb.
The Version Built for Neighbors, Not Commissioners
Some of what's on aspenraceway.com isn't new. The owners had already told Pitkin County's Open Space and Trails board, at a July 2 meeting, that they would fund construction of the Woody Creek Trailhead on the Rio Grande Trail, a quarter-million-dollar commitment, and that any employee housing not needed by staff would go first to local law enforcement and emergency responders. Both of those were already sitting inside the application.
What's different is what sits alongside them now, and neither appears in the county staff's summary of what was actually filed: relocating the raceway's entrance toward McLain Flats Road, away from the center of Woody Creek, and a proposed 25 mph limit at the Upper River Road and Smith Hill intersection, down from 35. Whether those two specifics would have changed the outcome of the July vote is impossible to know, since commissioners never got to weigh them. What's clear is that the owners are now making a version of their case directly to the people who live along these roads, outside the process the county controls.
| In the July application | On aspenraceway.com | |
|---|---|---|
| Race day limit | Removed entirely | Not addressed |
| Woody Creek Trailhead funding | Committed, presented to OST July 2 | Same commitment, repeated |
| First responder housing priority | Already in the filing | Same commitment, repeated |
| Entrance location | Existing, off Raceway Drive | Relocated toward McLain Flats Road |
| Speed limit, Upper River/Smith Hill | Not addressed in filing | Lowered to 25 mph |
Why This Still Matters If You're Nowhere Near Raceway Drive
Woody Creek is a small place. Roughly 300 people live here year-round, and the roads that would carry raceway traffic, Upper River Road, McLain Flats, the Smith Hill intersection, are the same roads everyone uses to get to the Tavern, the Community Center, or the highway. Cindy Herndon, who lives adjacent to the track, told commissioners in July that wildfire risk from increased vehicle traffic worried her as much as the noise. Nancy Pearce, from the nearby W/J Ranch, compared the sound of the engines to a dentist drill and said it had already made gardening in her own yard unpleasant.
Those are the concerns a relocated entrance and a lower speed limit are meant to answer. Whether they do is a question the county hasn't had a chance to weigh in on yet, because there's no new application on file. There's a website asking neighbors to sign on before there is.
The Story Isn't Closed. The Application Is.
If you moved to Woody Creek in the last few years for the quiet, the withdrawal in July probably felt like the matter was settled. It wasn't. The owners still hold a property zoned for exactly this use, they built a direct-to-resident campaign that ran in parallel with the county process rather than depending on it, and the person managing their land use strategy told commissioners point blank that the site will not sit still. With the application gone, aspenraceway.com is now the only place the case is actively being made, and it is still collecting names.
For anyone who owns land here, is house hunting, or simply wants to know what's happening two roads over, the smart move isn't to file this under resolved. It's to watch what the owners are building support for now, since that groundwork is very likely the shape of whatever eventually lands back in front of the Board of County Commissioners.
If you're weighing a move to Woody Creek, or you already call it home and want a clearer read on how land use decisions here actually play out, Palladium Group knows this valley from the inside. Reach out to request a private consultation.
