In a front-page story that has been mysteriously dumped into the Thatsracin.com ghetto, Kerry Singe explodes the notion that all with well with the $200m. France Family Expo Center. Attendance is running 35 percent below annual projections.

The Hall’s first budget has already jettisoned any notion of hitting the 800,000 visitor target for the first the year. The first-year projections have been scaled back to a very hopeful 575-600K judging from the $11.5m. the Hall expects to get in admission revenue. That is still about 15 percent above the 10,000 per week clip the Hall has done in its first month. Hall operations, however, are pegged as a $15.3m. expense. You can see where this is headed.

Let’s just assume that Hall rentals, gift shop sales, and all the general newness of the Convention Center expansion somehow make the numbers work for this first year even if only 520,000 paying customers show up. What happens in the out years?

A 35 percent drop over projected attendance going forward means something like 260K visitors per year, not 400K. Then you are looking at only about $5m. in admission revenue per year or millions less than it costs to keep the thing running.

And do not forget that the “corporate sponsorships” that were supposed to materialize to pay back the $21.5m. loan the city of Charlotte took out with Bank of Wells Fargo have not materialized, resulting in annual interest charges of almost one million a year piling up. The bankers can either pull a US National Log Flume Ride and forgive the “loan” — which an awake US Attorney might consider a fraud — or send the city a default notice. (Ha!)

Bottomline, everything was lined up to make this first month of the NASCAR Hall a smashing success. The first class of inductees included the some of the biggest names in the sport’s history, the NRA convention came to town right as the Hall opened and held events there, even the weather has been fairly decent. Yet it has not performed remotely near expectations.

Hold onto your wallets folks. This is only going to get worse.

Update: Whew. I hate going back into the clip file.