ECONOMIC ENGINE.

• Author: Speizer, Irwin
• Position: Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

That's racing -- the industry that Mooresville's economic developers got out of the way for.

As Mooresville's future cruised into town unnoticed, the past was pulling out. For its 9,300 residents, many whose livelihood depended on its mills, every textile job lost to cheap overseas labor seemed a dire threat. It proved to be an absolute one. "Now, we have zero traditional textile jobs in Mooresville," Town Manager Rick McLean says. "No weaving. No spinning. No dyeing and finishing. They all dosed and left. We're talking a couple of thousand jobs."

Recruiters lured replacements -- a glass factory, a ceramics manufacturer, a brewery. Some worked out, some didn't. Osaka, Japan-based Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., which had built a $120 million air-conditioner compressor plant in 1989, announced in January that it, too, was leaving. There go 600 more jobs.

But Mooresville, population 16,500, is booming, and it was what the town didn't do that worked. While industry hunters courted mills and plants, automobile racing roared into town. Uncourted, even unwanted at first, NASCAR shops -- 20 employees here, 40 there -- began popping up.

It took awhile. Only midway through the decade did Mooresville formally acknowledge its stealth savior. In 1995, the town that the local chamber of commerce once trumpeted as the Port City of Lake Norman became Race City USA. Its reputation as the capital of stock-car racing is so well established that tourists from as far as Australia come to glimpse a race-car mechanic changing a spark plug.

If it seems baffling that an industry that assaults the senses the way stock-car racing does could slip in with so little notice, small wonder. The brightly colored, logo-dominated cars are built to be seen. And heard. But few in Mooresville complain about the noise. An estimated 70 race teams call Mooresville home. With budgets ranging from $8 million to $12 million, they're spending $700 million a year. Some, like NASCAR star Dale Earnhardt's operation, employ 100 or more who, according to UNC Charlotte researchers, draw paychecks comparable to the $54,000 a year that Research Triangle Park workers average. Counting related businesses, Mooresville has 1,500 to 2,000 racing jobs, and every year, 160,000 people visit the North Carolina Auto Racing Hall of Fame.

It doesn't have a racetrack -- Lowe's Motor Speedway lies 15 miles away in Concord. No matter, says Melanie O'Connell Underwood, executive vice president and economic developer for the Mooresville-South Iredell County Chamber of Commerce. "Racing," she says, "is our largest industry."

Why Mooresville? Why not Concord, three times as large and site of the speedway, or Charlotte, just 35 miles down the road? Locals offer a host of explanations. The allure of Lake Norman, just five miles away, to drivers and crew chiefs who can live well and still commute to shops a few minutes away. Cheap land. The interstate runs through it. Nearby airports.

The simple truth: Mooresville got lucky. It mostly stood back and watched -- even if it wasn't listening -- as race shops revved up. "We just tried to be cooperative and stay out of their way," McLean says. But standing aside for racing...