Big trouble for quarter-midgets

EVERETT — For 34 years, Snohomish County quarter-midget racers have burned rubber on an oval track at Paine Field.

But federal airport regulations and the county's plans to develop the land that the quarter-midget track sits on are forcing the "midgetters," as they call themselves, to find a new place to race.

The Snohomish County Quarter Midget Association is the largest quarter-midget club in the state. With 50 families and 65 racers, it's also larger than any group in Oregon or British Columbia.

The little-known sport is like go-karting but with more safety equipment and roll bars on the small, multicolored cars. Racers 5 to 16 years old zoom around an asphalt track at up to 40 mph. The cars are called quarter-midgets because they are a quarter the size of the midget cars raced by adults, or a little smaller than a standard go-kart.

"It's just an absolute blast," said Denise Smutny, whose daughter, Kerstin, 12, got hooked on the sport when she was 7.

The same Federal Aviation Administration regulation that has caught up with the racers endangered two ballfields on airport property recently. The rule says airport property can't be used for nonairport purposes. To solve the ballfield problem, Paine Field sold the fields last month to the county parks department so the Mukilteo Little League could continue using them.

The quarter-midget track's problem isn't as easily solved. The property that includes the track is prime commercial and industrial land, and although the county doesn't have a use for the land now, it expects to someday.

"When it comes, it could come with a fairly short fuse, and we want to be ready," Paine Field Director Dave Waggoner said.

Smutny, director of the midget association, said, "In a perfect world, we would be able to stay on Paine Field's property, and they could just build around us."

That doesn't seem likely, so the association approached the Snohomish County Council last week to ask for help finding a new track site.

Several proposed locations have fallen through. A site at the Evergreen State Fairgrounds in Monroe would have required an expensive drainage basin and interfered with parking. A site near Monroe was too expensive; an Ebey Island site had contamination problems.

Most recently, the county suggested a track inside the fairgrounds' Evergreen Speedway, but association members fear that would detract from the family aspect of the sport.

Smutny said families park their motor homes the night before races at the current site, camp and have potlucks while their children practice on the track. They couldn't do that on the Evergreen site.

Financial considerations make their search even more difficult. The association pays only $27 a month for the Paine Field site, and it's hoping for a similar deal someplace else in the county.

"They do have a very good, family-oriented sport," said County Councilman Dave Gossett, the chairman of the council's Operations and Performance Auditing Committee, which will consider the midgetters' plight. Gossett said he is hoping to get the track on his committee's agenda in the next couple of weeks.

Emily Heffter: 425-783-0624 or eheffter@seattletimes.com.