It’s a story that’s played out countless times over the years at race tracks all across the country, and it’s one that will unfortunately continue to burden track operators and competitors as long as auto racing exists: neighbor moves into an area surrounding an existing drag strip knowing fully well that it’s open and operational, and then, after the fact, proceed to dismantle the track at all costs to protect their property value and obtain ‘peace and quiet’. But, this time, the race track won … kind of.

Florida’s Green Cove Springs Dragway came under fire recently when a local resident, Peter Swanson, who purchased a home in the area in 2013, approached the City Council with intentions of bringing a halt to the noise emitting from the Green Cove track, which is owned and operated by 71-year old Peter Scalzo. According to various news reports, Swanson complained when the track made its seasonal switch to evening racing activities, at which point he contends the track began to exceed local noise ordinances. Police officers verified that this was indeed the case, but the City Council, in an unusual stance for a case such as this involving a race track, actually sided with the drag strip in 2015, declaring their weekly races as “temporary events” and therefore not subject to the city noise ordinances.

Swanson, however, called that move a “sleight of hand” by the city, going on to tell The Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville that “we are not opposed to the track. We are opposed to noise that exceeds longstanding pollution standards for ‘quiet enjoyment’ of our properties.”

The Green Cove Dragway is built on one of the runways of the former Naval Air Station Green Cove Springs (originally Naval Air Station Lee Field, when commissioned in 1941), and is now a part of the Reynolds Airpark and industrial complex, which serves as, among other things, a gigantic parking lot for a local car dealer to store new vehicles, beyond the shutdown area of the dragstrip. The track is largely surrounded by industrial-use buildings, with the nearest residential area situated about a mile to the west, as the crow flies. And, as a quick search shows, Peter Swanson’s address isn’t one of those located nearest to the race track.

Scalzo, insisting that he “wants to be a good neighbor,” agreed during a City Council session on Wednesday to comply with the city noise ordinances, and as part of that agreement, will cease racing on Friday nights immediately and halt racing activities on Saturday nights no later than 10 p.m., whether eliminations are complete or not.

“We are going to do whatever it takes to make sure we can keep the Green Cove Dragway racing family together,” Scalzo told First Coast News’ Anne Schindler, and it would seem that both he and the city are in agreement that the area is better off with a drag strip. This story serves perhaps as a model for how these cases ought to go, in a perfect world: residents and racetrack operators coming to mutually beneficial agreements that satisfy both parties and allow the track to continue on. Sadly, as history has shown, they rarely go that way, but the Green Cove case represents a victory for drag racing, if but a small one.