Life is entirely a matter of perspective. If my neighbor decided to create a half-mile twisty karting track next to me I’d do what any reasonable person does and buy a go-kart. Unfortunately, not everyone is as reasonable as I am and that’s why the local authorities shut down the operation within minutes of its first use.
This whole story will be a litmus test for your feelings about race cars, zoning regulations, sound, neighbors, and the benefits of asking for permission in an attempt to avoid forgiveness. I’m quite a YIMBY (yes-in-my-backyard) although my YIMBYism usually revolves around building more affordable housing.
It’s amusing to extend the concept of YIMBYism to race tracks as, in general, I also think there should be more race tracks in this world. This is clearly not a commonly held belief in Suburban Baltimore.
He’s Doing It All For Achilles
The best way to be truly successful at racing is to have a parent or parents who are invested in your racing. And by invested, of course, I mean willing to spend a ridiculous amount of money to help you win karting trophies.
This isn’t unique to karting as trying to get your kid to become a professional in almost any endeavor, whether athletic or even artistic, can encourage some questionable financial decisions. Up here in New York you have pre-teens getting vocal lessons from Broadway extras and advanced swim lessons for seven-year-olds.
It’s just that, as Aedan recently pointed out, the costs associated with getting into racing are at the extreme end. Take our protagonist (or antagonist if you listen to his neighbors), Charles Siperko, who is the CEO of a roofing company in the area.
His 10-year-old son Achilles is obsessed with racing and has been working his way up through the karting world so that one day he can become an open-wheel racer. Here’s what Siperko told the local Fox affiliate:
“He wants to be an open wheel driver. So, it’s hard work,” says Siperko, “He’s out of town every weekend. He’ll get up at 5am, go to the gym to work out during the week. He reads about racing, watches videos.”
He says his son eats, sleeps, and breathes motorsports. While other kids his age are hanging out with friends, Achilles spends every weekend traveling to Florida for practice and across the country for races. Along the way, he’s collected some impressive hardware, but the end destination is becoming a professional racer.
Drive, talent, and a parent able to take you to Florida every weekend are the keys to making it in this industry, but that last bit is probably the most important.
The Track Looks Pretty Good
Going to Florida every weekend has to be a lot for a small child and the drive from Highland, Maryland to Orlando is about 13 hours with little traffic. Laking a high-quality karting track nearby, Siperko did the only logical thing he could do and put $100,000 into a kart track in his backyard.
This track looks good from space with a nice variety of turns and different configurations to make the most out of a half-mile space. In the video, it’s even more obvious that there are some elevation changes as well.
One thing that sticks out is that there’s a brand-new house that’s quite large, with a swimming pool, tennis courts, and a lot of open space adjacent to this parcel that contains the karting track. It seems a little out of place with the other homes around it. Anyway, just a totally random observation.
The track was completed in January and it’s sadly only been driven one time. From that same article, Siperko says “He got on the track for 15mins. If 15 minutes! Maybe 10 minutes. Then my neighbors called the police and obviously they called the County.”
Strange!
The Neighbors Do Not Recognize How Nice The Track Is
A quick perusal of the Greater Highland Crossroads Association Community Group’s Facebook Page shows that people are generally not on board with this exactly.
Here’s what Sarah Troxel, who is reportedly the mom, said:
My ten-year-old son eat, breathes, and sleeps motorsports. His passion holds the seeds of a future professional car-racing career, but it’s not an easy journey. For a year and a half, he’s been karting. Every single weekend, he makes sacrifices that children of his age aren’t usually asked to – traveling all the way to Florida to practice. Playground time with friends, birthday parties, socializing at family events – he misses it all for his single-minded pursuit of becoming a professional racer. We’ve built a go-kart track on our private property so during the warm months, he can train at home. This is not intended to be a public track, no races will be held here nor will it in any way shape or form be open to the public!
He’s just a kid trying to make it in a difficult career. Here’s a response from someone named Kelly Frazer:
These people ought to be strung up, IMHO. Major portions of the track are right up against property lines, and construction was done with total disregard to set-backs, to say nothing of the impact this might have on adjacent properties. No application for a permit, no environmental impact statements. Numerous rules and regs about such constructions totally ignored. And now they claim they will sign up for a conditional use permit, whereby they will agree to whatever conditions the county might impose which would then allowing them to continue. Asking for forgiveness, vs permission. These scofflaws say the track is strictly private, not open to the public. They also claim that go-carts these days run on batteries, so noise is minimal. Pure speculation. I believe there is no precedent for such a facility within this zoning area, so the county has nothing to base any decision on. They will have to make up whatever conditions would be imposed in order to agree that such a conditional use permit can be issued. So there is the rub. I believe the permitting system is set up to favor issuing conditional uses in this neighborhood. Valid conditional uses include doctor’s offices, day care centers, and a number of others that have precedence and presence in the area. It is possible that the county will agree with its other residents that such a facility can never be permitted, and that there are no conditions adequate to allow such a thing. Of course the lawyers hired by the track owners say that they will conform to whatever conditions might be imposed, which position assumes that a set of conditions can be put forward. I think the county should come down hard on these people, deny any such activity as impossible to precondition, and then make them adhere to wet land remediation and removal of all structure within prior agreed to and recorded set-backs. Under penalty of fine. If they put me in charge, that’s what I’d do. But I’m not in charge, never will be, and since lawyers are involved, there will be a fight, it will not be pretty, great amounts of time and yet more money will be wasted toward an outcome that I can’t predict.
That bit about not getting permits is true, according to Siperko, who has airtight logic:
“I called paving companies, and they told me that it’s my property. If it’s not touching a main road I don’t need a permit. It’s my property and I believed that” said Siperko, “I’m not in a neighborhood. This is a family farm.”
I cannot confirm that the image from Facebook is accurate, but a search of county records seems to confirm that it’s correct:
The area highlighted in black is the property listed as owned by Siperko and you can see a house that’s registered to a different owner right at the edge of the track.
There was a community meeting a few weeks ago and this was addressed, though most people seemed unhappy according to a Baltimore Fishbowl reporter who attended the meeting:
Nearly all who spoke at the meeting argued against the track, though degrees of animosity toward it varied. Some went so far as to insult Siperko’s parenting directly. Most, though, focused on the impact of the racetrack on their quality of life, property value, and the environment.
“It’s so frustrating,” said JoJo Lerner, a resident who also lives on Mink Hollow Road. “He said he Googled, and he didn’t see that he needed a permit for this. But it wasn’t just that. He didn’t talk to any of his neighbors. He didn’t tell anyone…. It definitely lowers the value of everyone’s property around it, because who wants to live right next to this go-kart thing?”
Surprising your neighbors with a race track, if they are not me, probably isn’t going to work. Even I can see that. It’s now on the Howard County government to determine if a conditional use with some restrictions (limited hours/electric karts only) will be accepted or if he’ll have to remove the track.
This Could Have Probably Been Done Better
Far be it for me to suggest how someone else should raise his kids, but perhaps it would have been more successful if there had been some discussion with neighbors before the track was finished. This guy is a roofer so he’s probably filed a permit before.
If he’d have asked me I’d have definitely said yes to the track. Even a high-powered modern go-kart isn’t that much louder than the kind of yard equipment that many community neighbors either use or contract out to other people to use on their behalf.
Of course, Thomas made the great suggestion in Slack that maybe some arrangement would have to be made. In order for the track to be usable the dad would have to agree that my family gets some use of the facility. This is really a boon for everyone as steel sharpens steel and it would give Achilles someone to race against (in this case I would be the steel getting sharpened).
If you want one badly enough and file the permits, this isn’t an impossible journey. Alan Wilzing built a race track in his front yard and it only took him an estimated $500,000 in legal fees to get it through the local government. It’s all worth it for an IndyCar contract, right?
Dude voted for Trump, guarantee it
Okay, so, I checked out the parcel using Maryland’s tax data site and Howard County’s online zoning map. The property’s 11 acres and in the RR-DEO district (Rural Residential, with some sort of density exchange provision that I got sick of trying to read on my phone.) It allows for single-family residential and agricultural use, and the land use tag on the tax record indicates it’s mixed residential and other – probably “farm” for a tax exemption. The long straightaway is directly on the property line with a parcel with another house to the west (left in the photo with the parcel outline above) and while the closest house is the one on the parcel itself, the house to the southeast isn’t much further and isn’t screened by any vegetation.
The zoning ordinance allows “[p]rivate recreational facilities, such as parks, athletic fields, swimming pools, basketball courts and tennis courts, reserved for use by residents of a community and their guests. Such facilities shall be located within neighborhoods and communities where all properties are included within recorded covenants and liens which govern and provide financial support for operation of the facilities.” So, yeah, kinda, if it were under the aegis of an established HOA-like thing with a funding stream to maintain it, it might in general be allowed (although almost certainly only after getting a permit), but it doesn’t seem to be a by right use in this context.
There seem to be some small streams and ponds in the vicinity, and HoCo is probably pretty sensitive about drainage given the flooding that occurred in Ellicott City (which is probably 10 or so miles eastward and has 250+ years of development history, but still.) This area is also on septic and almost assuredly well water, so there’s the potential for changes in the way the land percs and at least theoretical potential for well contamination. And it looks like it takes up probably two or three of the 11 acres, so I can’t imagine that this construction would be allowed without some kind of review, especially in a part of the county that’s reserved for lower densities and lesser development impacts. This track isn’t small at all.
My guess is he was afraid they’d say no, so he went the “ask for forgiveness” route.
I’ve learned the hard way it does sometimes hurt to ask (our mayor pushed through an extension of a city street at our expense in the middle of our variance request, after we’d been told there were no plans to extend the road when we first asked about building before we even bought the property), but a go kart track is a world away from a shed out back (which nobody had any issues with – the mayor was basically just extorting us to pay for a roadway that didn’t need to be improved. Needless to say, the project ain’t happening).
This guy definitely should have asked first. I get the “no permit needed” argument, but he should have respected the setbacks. That pretty much seals the deal right there.
Our neighbors feed ducks in their backyard, the ducks do not stay in the backyard, the ducks and their byproducts are regularly in my yard. I would MUCH rather have my neighbors build a gokart track in their backyard.
He should make it available for running / walking / bicycles / roller blades / Power Wheel use by the neighbors when not needed for race practice.
I’m guessing that area probably isn’t very walkable and might not be very safe for kids on the roads. Low traffic but fast traffic.