Westmoreland staff, supervisors question safety, parking for Custom Tees Motorsports Park special-event request

Custom Tees Motorsports Park, operating on the property formerly known as Colonial Beach Drag Strip in Westmoreland County, presented a special-events application (Case 2504-MSE-01) seeking approval for multiple 2025 events including burnout exhibitions, live entertainment on May 31, 2025, and a monthly flea/farmers market on the first Saturday of each month beginning in May 2025. County staff said the application packet lists several additional 2025 dates for burnout exhibitions and that the request includes an occupancy/attendance estimate that staff recorded as 5,000.

Why it matters: Supervisors and staff said the applicant must provide detailed site planning and operational safeguards before a recommendation can be made to the Board of Supervisors. Concerns raised at the work session included crowd size and egress, precision in parking layout, emergency vehicle access, acceptable hours under the county’s special-events standard, and whether overnight RV parking historically associated with multi-day racing events would recur.

County planning staff introduced Case 2504-MSE-01 and summarized the request as a special-event application that would add burnout exhibitions, music and food to the property’s existing uses and asked the work session to identify information the Board will need to act. Staff noted the county’s special-events standard generally prohibits activities before 7 a.m. and that the county noise ordinance provides an exemption until 10 p.m. for certain events. "Actually, the noise ordinance, exempts them from, that until 10PM," staff…