Jasper Hendricks, chair of Nashville’s Fair Commissioners Board, is attempting to quash a proposed Metro Charter amendment as it heads toward a referendum vote in November. The amendment would swap affordable housing with auto racing as a required Nashville Fairgrounds use, tweaking a charter change that passed 2-to-1 in 2011. Hendricks supported Bristol Motor Speedway’s NASCAR push last year as a commissioner and received $1,100 from the corporation during his failed 2023 campaign for District 19 councilmember.
In a letter dated March 8, Hendricks urged members of the Charter Revision Commission not to approve the affordable housing amendment at its March 11 meeting. Hendricks invokes his position as Fair Chair twice in the letter, arguing that an affordable housing mandate would burden the city with an unknown fiscal impact. Striking racing could also derail Bristol’s NASCAR push, which stalled out last summer despite support from then-Mayor John Cooper's administration. Hendricks’ lobbying looks like an effort to keep a future city deal with Bristol alive.
Charter amendment would add affordable housing in place of auto racing at fairgrounds
“The speedway requires significant capital improvements,” Hendricks writes in the letter. "Removing Auto Racing from the Charter could jeopardize Metro’s ability to find a suitable industry partner with the financial means to make those necessary repairs."
Last year, upgrades to make the site NASCAR-ready proposed by Bristol totaled $164 million. Cooper, Bristol and Butch Spyridon (then the president of Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp) had hammered out a three-way deal over several years to modernize the fairgrounds into a destination racing venue. Opponents skewered the deal’s finances and waged a sustained effort against racing, which they said would ruin quality of life in surrounding neighborhoods. The deal appeared to die when Cooper left office in September.
Attorney Kenny Byrd and neighborhood organizer Heidi Basgall Favorite, formerly a track opponent with Neighbors Opposing Track Expansion, have helped shape the amendment, which they say responds to a critical need for affordable housing near Nashville’s urban core.
“When it comes to a potential Metro Charter amendment, the Fair Board chair is no more or less important than the individual Nashville taxpayer,” Byrd tells the Scene. “Putting a question before the voters simply allows taxpayers to weigh in on the future of this public property.”
Major upgrades at the fairgrounds racetrack would be a city gamble on Nashville’s racing future
Despite Hendricks’ protest, the charter revision certified the substance and format of the proposed affordable housing amendment on March 11. Opponents have 30 days to appeal that decision. Hendricks recently added an item of new business to the Fair Commissioners Board’s March 14 meeting titled, “Discussion regarding racing at The Fairgrounds Nashville.”
“Our job is to listen and compile opinions in the most neutral way,” Diego Eguiarte, one of the Fair Board’s four active commissioners, tells the Scene. (One board seat remains vacant.) “We should not be opinionated, and we shouldn’t be making a decision or pretending to make a decision that is outside our purview, domain or responsibilities. We are not elected officials, and we don’t represent public opinion. That is not a line we should cross. We do what we are chartered to do.”
Hendricks’ Metro-listed phone number had been turned off and he did not respond to the Scene’s questions via email.
