Another sports venue is being built in Winston-Salem — a state-of-the-art indoor running track that should be finished by the end of the year.
JDL Castle Corporation is a real-estate development company in Winston-Salem.
It is renovating an old warehouse off South Stratford Road with the hopes of attracting college and high-school indoor meets.
"We actually started some of the (demolition) work on Tuesday," said Craig Longhurst, who works for JDL Castle and is a former runner at Wake Forest.
"We were hoping to keep it closer to town, but we just couldn't find a big enough area. But we like where we've settled."
The JDL Fast Track, housed in the 105,000-square-foot warehouse, is at 2505 Empire Drive in West Point Business Park, about two miles southwest of Interstate 40.
The plan is to have the 200-meter flat track ready for use this winter.
David Shannon, the owner of JDL Castle and an avid runner, said he has been kicking around the idea of building an indoor track for about two years. He put the cost of building it, which includes the purchase price of the warehouse, at about $2.5 million.
"It's all private money," Shannon said, "and I just think it fills a need not only for around here, but for the entire state."
There is only one full-time indoor track in the state and that's at the University of North Carolina. That facility, the Eddie Smith Field House, is usually the site of the NCHSAA indoor championships but wasn't available last season because of construction on campus. The 2011 indoor state meets were held on an outdoor track in Fayetteville.
"I guess when we read in the paper that the indoor championships were moved outdoors, we kind of looked at the project again to see if we could do this," Shannon said.
The six-lane track also will have an eight-lane sprint straightaway, and the area inside the oval will be big enough for field events.
Shannon said bleachers will be built to seat at least 900 and that there will parking for about 350 vehicles. There will also be ample office and meeting-room space and a training room.
Shannon said he was in contact with NCHSAA officials during the initial phase of the project.
"I've talked at length with Davis Whitfield and Que Tucker of the high-school athletic association, and they are very interested," Shannon said.
Whitfield, the NCHSAA's executive director, is excited about the prospect of having a choice for the indoor championships. Although he said holding the meets at North Carolina has worked well, he likes having an option.
"The most exciting thing about this is it fills a need because there just aren't that many indoor tracks in North Carolina," Whitfield said. "So we are looking forward to seeing the facility when it's completed and what it has to offer."
Longhurst said he and Shannon hope to schedule some college meets the first few months the track is open.
"We want to start out slow when we first open to work out all the kinks," Longhurst said. "But we've been in contact with a lot of the universities in our area, and we think it's going to help them practice, especially when it gets cold in the dead of winter."
Other uses for the track, according to Shannon, would be the Crazy Kids track program and Fleet Feet's training programs.
"We draw from a pretty big area as far as colleges and universities," Shannon said.
Another bonus to having the facility near Stratford Road, according to Longhurst, is the proximity of hotels, an important sell for college meets and the NCHSAA championships.
"We looked at the high-school championship numbers, and there are around 1,500 athletes and coaches, so that's a big number," Longhurst said.
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