Closure and Transformation Into A Shopping Mall
After former Los Angeles Rams player Les Richter sold the property to Fritz Duda in 1983, 1988 would be the final year of racing for Riverside International Raceway. On June 12, 1988, NASCAR held its final race at RIR – a race won by Rusty Wallace (a caution flag was out for Ruben Garcia when he came off Turn 9 and lost control of his car and hit a wall, missing the grandstands). In 1989, after the SCORE International held its last race, the track finally closed its gates after 32 years of racing. Fritz Duda turned the "House that Dan Gurney built" into a shopping mall which opened in 1992. The Moreno Valley Mall at Towngate is on the northern end of the former Raceway Property and houses now occupy the southern end of the old racetrack (where Tim Richmond and Dale Earnhardt raced). In a 1994 topographical map, the remains of Riverside's Turn 9 and a wall were still visible. However, today nothing is left of RIR except for memorabilia from the racetrack. The old Administration Building remained until 2005, when it was torn down to make way for a complex of townhomes.
When Riverside closed in 1988, it followed in the footsteps of Ontario Motor Speedway (in nearby Ontario), which closed in 1980, and followed by Ascot Park in Gardena in 1991. In the 1990s, two new circuits opened: Auto Club Speedway in nearby Fontana in 1997, and Toyota Speedway at Irwindale in 1999. Both tracks, like Riverside, have been used for filming.
In 2003, the remainder of the old Riverside International Raceway was torn up. The sign that was at California 60 and Day Street was removed to make way for a Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse and Turn 9 of the old track is now home to houses.
In 2003, plans were announced to build a 3-mile (4.8 km) road course with a similar design to the famed Riverside layout in Merced, California. The track would have been known as the Riverside Motorsports Park, but the project was abandoned in 2009.
Read more about this topic: Riverside International Raceway
Famous quotes containing the words shopping mall, shopping and/or mall:
“The most important fact about our shopping malls, as distinct from the ordinary shopping centers where we go for our groceries, is that we do not need most of what they sell, not even for our pleasure or entertainment, not really even for a sensation of luxury. Little in them is essential to our survival, our work, or our play, and the same is true of the boutiques that multiply on our streets.”
—Henry Fairlie (1924–1990)
“The new shopping malls make possible the synthesis of all consumer activities, not least of which are shopping, flirting with objects, idle wandering, and all the permutations of these.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Finishing schools in the fifties were a good place to store girls for a few years before marrying them off, a satisfactory rest stop between college weekends spent husband hunting. It was a haven for those of us adept at styling each other’s hair, playing canasta, and chain smoking Pall Mall extra-long cigarettes.”
—Barbara Howar (b. 1934)