Andrew Forbes and his heavy earth-moving equipment have been busy the past week at Blackwater Motocross Park taking advantage of the unseasonably warm and dry weather.
He's been told by the Canadian Motorsport Racing Corporation the current parking lot for the city's motocross racing facility has to be three times its current size and the dirt road into the track needs to be widened.
The improvements are required to accommodate as many as 5,000 people, including 400 or 500 racers, when Prince George hosts its first-ever CMRC national championship event, June 10-11, 2017.
"This is something many of our club members have dreamed about for a long time - I don't know if we ever thought it would happen, but it seems to have happened," said Forbes, president of the Prince George Motocross Association.
"It's not a lot of notice to get ready but we're rushing hard to build the parking lot. We have to clear probably three or four acres. The road coming in right now is a single-lane goat trail and (CMRC wants) the full two lanes of roadway coming in."
The eight-stop Rockstar Energy Drink MX Nationals starts in Western Canada and moves to the East, wrapping up in mid-August. Prince George will be the second stop in the series after Kamloops, with Calgary and Regina also hosting the series, which features the top professional and amateur riders from Canada and the U.S.
Prince George is taking over from Nanaimo as one of the Western Canadian stops. For the local racing community, the race is an unprecedented chance to showcase the spectator-friendly Blackwater facility. The trails are built into a large hill and most of the track is visible from the top of a long berm where spectators converge. The Prince George track is located off Blackwater Road about 30 kilometres southwest of the city centre.
Forbes owns Forbes Industrial and has been working with club volunteers on the new parking lot.
"(CMRC officials who visited the site) were saying it's one of the better tracks (in Canada) from the perspective of being able to film it," said Forbes.
"It's a little bit far from town and the other problem we deal with is poor soil. It's hard clay with rock in it and we struggle with it every race. The soil packs hard like concrete and the only way to do anything about that is to rip it up and that's problematic if it rains. If it rains it just turns into an absolute mudpit."
For local pros like Jess Pettis, who finished fifth overall this year in the CMRC national MX-2 250cc class, it's a chance to compete on their home track in a national race in a televised event without having to travel long distances.
"We're really hoping our local Prince George riders will step up and do really well at this race," said Forbes. "It's going to be good for our local Prince George club and good for the sport of motocross in the Central Interior. The club was unanimous in the vote to host it. It's an awful lot of work for the local club and the Nanaimo club were just tired. It was a very few people doing all the work."
The Prince George club signed a three-year commitment to be on the national calendar and Forbes is hopeful it will go well beyond that and become an annual event. If it does attract thousands of people, area hotels, restaurants and other service-industry businesses stand to benefit.
"I've been told by the CMRC it will generate in the millions of dollars in economic spin-off impact," said Forbes.
Forbes said his 70-member club will welcome any new members and volunteers to help share the work involved in staging the national race. He can be reached at [email protected].
