Warren County magistrates gave Judge-Executive Mike Buchanon the go-ahead Friday to sign a $300,000 reimbursement agreement with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, meaning work should start soon to widen the main entrance to Beech Bend Raceway Park.

Even so, the project won’t be done by the time of Beech Bend’s first racing event of the season, scheduled for March 11, District 1 Magistrate James &#8220Doc” Kaelin said.

The work is expected to repave and widen each lane by 1.5 feet and remove the row of 191 trees that now stands between them. The lanes will remain at different elevations, requiring a guardrail down the middle, according to the grant agreement.

Local and state officials lobbied Gov. Ernie Fletcher for the appropriation from his discretionary budget for several months, culminating in a Nov. 1 meeting with state Tourism Commissioner Randy Fiveash and Commerce Secretary George Ward. Later that day, Fletcher announced the grant during a scheduled appearance in Bowling Green.

Officials said Nov. 1 that that they hoped to begin work on the road within a week of the announcement so it would be ready for a surge of traffic in the spring racing season.

Beech Bend owner Dallas Jones said Friday that he was told in November that work should start right after last year’s final race, which ended Nov. 27. But since then, no work has been done.

&#8220I have not heard from a single person on that road for quite some time,” said Jones, who was in Florida on Friday.

The park will actually open March 3, so he’s glad Warren Fiscal Court has at least made this move.

Local businessman David Garvin announced months ago he would give part of a field he owns adjacent to Beech Bend’s main entrance to smooth out the existing 90-degree turn.

The total cost of the project is about $350,000, with the remaining $50,000 probably coming from county funds, Buchanon has said, and the county-owned park entrance road will also get a two-way turning lane.

On Friday, magistrates also authorized paying Bowling Green Municipal Utilities $6,500 to move its poles from the path of the road-widening, Kaelin said.

Traffic backups at the park entrance have figured largely in the multi-year legal fight between Jones and neighboring homeowner Matt Baker over ownership of a nearby road leading more directly to Beech Bend’s racetrack. Several lawsuits over public use of that road are ongoing, and Jones has long argued that its closure to race traffic – as ordered last year by a judge – would lead to the loss of large racing events, which bring millions in tourism dollars into Warren County.

That issue became urgent in October after the National Hot Rod Association announced its 25,000-visitor hot rod reunion wouldn’t return to Beech Bend next year. Jones blamed that on the road controversy, but NHRA officials said it had more to do with the event outgrowing Beech Bend’s facilities in general. Loss of the hot rod reunion will have a $4.5 million impact on Warren County, according to the state.

The sponsor of two more large racing events said after the NHRA announcement that he, too, would probably not bring his business back to the racetrack next year, and he specifically cited worries about the disputed access road as the reason.

Beech Bend’s eight or 10 large racing events regularly draw thousands of people from other states. The park, which includes an amusement park as well as the raceway, is the biggest tourist attraction in Warren County.

Baker’s appeal of the access road’s ownership is waiting on a decision of whether the Kentucky Supreme Court will hear it, while another case Baker filed – which argues that Beech Bend as a whole is operating illegally under county zoning rules – is scheduled for a Warren Circuit Court hearing April 21, Jones said.