Ravenswood International Raceway and Claremont Speedway will be relocating to a new Motorplex at Kwinana, in Perth's southern suburbs.

Ravenswood management welcomed the Western Australia state government announcement confirming their relocation to the new site which will be located on Rockingham Road between Anketell and Thomas Roads, on a former Alcoa residue site which will be transformed over the next two years into a modern landscaped motorsport facility. The site is just 35 km. from the centre of Perth and with the freeway running from the heart of the city right past, the new site will be just 25 minutes drive from the GPO (General Post Office).

Motorplex spokesman Gary Miocevich said the Motorplex would give a huge boost to the many businesses that gain all or part of their turn-over from motorsports. "The Motorplex will create employment and recreation opportunities for local residents, especially young people."

Miocevich said that up to 200 full and part time jobs would be directly related to the Motorplex, with hundreds more spin-off jobs in all sorts of areas from building and servicing race cars, to food, merchandise, advertising, hire, tourism and many other industries.

"Events held at the Motorplex will create extensive tourism opportunities with international and national racing teams and spectators attending many of the drag racing and speedway events," stated Miocevich. "The new Motorplex is expected to attract around 15,000 local, interstate and overseas visitors to major events with minor events attracting between 1000 and 5000 people."

Miocevich said the Rockingham Road site was the result of four years of comprehensive investigations and was well separated from residential areas. "The Motorplex will be designed to minimize noise emissions, using sound walls and sound bunding. This will play an important role in ensuring the new Motorplex will give great benefits to the local community while being an environmentally responsible neighbour," he added. "The Rockingham Road site also has excellent dual carriageway traffic access which will have very little impact on local residential areas."

Miocevich also said that the Kwinana area was desperately in need of recreation facilities, especially for youths and the Motorplex would certainly be of great benefit to the community.

"The Motorplex will also have the ability to be used for community-based driver training activities. Perth has very few places where family groups can attend "hands-on" driver training with attitude change as the emphasis and this would be a side benefit of the Motorplex. Other uses such as exhibitions for the local communities and surrounding industry are also being considered, however it is a little early to get to that level of detail."

The Motorplex is scheduled to be completed in time for an official opening in October 2000 to take over from Ravenswood and Claremont which must both close at the end of the 1999-2000 season. This move will allow competitors to commence their new seasons at the new Motorplex.

This is certainly the best news to reach our ears in recent times and should help to raise the profile of drag racing to an even higher level in Western Australia.

Already the proposal has generated the predictable local protest, with the story running on the front page of the local newspaper, under the heading "Speedway site decision riles".

The principal complaint seemed to be that the local residents felt that they had not been consulted in the planning process, even if the $6 million proposal would have social and economic value for the community.