Waterford — This is going to be a busy month for George Whitney.

The Westbrook resident was getting ready to retire from the semi-professional racing world this year when the future of the New London-Waterford Speedbowl, Whitney’s home track, was put into question with the arrest of its owner on charges related to an alleged human trafficking ring.

But last month, he says, he faxed a proposal to attorneys for the owner, Bruce Bemer, formed a limited liability company and signed a lease to start organizing races there within the month.

The track and the community of racers, mechanics, seasonal staff and fans had come back from hard times before, as multiple ownership changes, legal trouble, foreclosure and bankruptcy have plagued the Speedbowl in recent years.

But the track has continued to host races on Saturday nights and served as a home for passionate drivers who wanted to keep it going and pass on a love for racing to younger generations.

Bemer, a Glastonbury businessman, bought the track at a 2014 auction with a $1.75 million bid, a move that many saw as a renaissance for the troubled track.

Then Bemer, 63, was arrested in March. He faces a felony charge of patronizing a trafficked person for his role in what police have called a prostitution scheme in which mentally disabled young men were lured into sex with promises of friendship, money and drugs. Under state statute, a trafficked person is someone who is illegally compelled to engage in sexual conduct or provide labor or services. The charge is included under the law regarding patronizing a prostitute.

Bemer posted a $500,000 bond and was released March 30. He is next scheduled to appear in court June 20.

In the past three months, local drivers and track enthusiasts have waited for news about the track. Speedbowl staff have posted multiple anonymous announcements on the track’s website, only to have them reversed or rescinded by a spokesman for Bemer’s lawyers.

As the summer racing seasons began at Thompson Speedway Motorsports Park and Stafford Motor Speedway, civil cases against Bemer threaten to force Bemer and another man accused in the scheme to hand over control of their assets to the court.

Multiple staff members had quit. NASCAR rescinded its sponsorship of a major racing series at the track, signs came down and the first month of the season came and went without any definitive answer about what it all meant.

Watching it all unfold, Whitney said, he decided he didn’t want to see the track meet the demise that many were predicting.

“To us as racers, that was heartbreaking,” he said.

He reached out to Bemer with an offer.

“I called him ... and I said I’d like to save the track,” Whitney said Tuesday. “I saw everything going back and forth — it’s being sold, or not sold. So I typed out a proposal and just faxed it off.”

When he got a response from Bemer’s attorneys offering to lease him the Speedbowl, he said, it came as a surprise.

“I was kind of just mulling it through my head one day. ... I didn’t expect anything to happen, and it did,” he said.

“The million dollar question is, everyone wants to know where the money’s going,” Whitney said. None of the profits of running the Speedbowl will end up in Bemer's pocket, he said.

Whitney will operate the Speedbowl as Whitney Farm Racing, a limited liability company he incorporated in late May and registered to his address in Westbrook. He will lease the track from 1080 Raceway Property Associates LLC, a company registered in Glastonbury to another one of Bemer’s businesses and the law firm representing him.

Further details about the lease were not disclosed.

On Thursday, a handful of cars sat in the Speedbowl’s parking lot off Route 85 in Waterford. The track was empty, but Whitney and a handful of Speedbowl staff members sat in an office trailer holding meetings and sitting at desks covered in paperwork.

A sign near Route 85 said, in black and red block letters, "see you in 2017!"

'It's the bowl'

Whitney would not say Tuesday whether he thought the severity of the accusations against Bemer would deter people from coming back to the track. The details of the charges, he said, were not for him to discuss, nor were the reactions of the racing fans who heard them.

Despite the late start, he said he hopes to keep things at the Speedbowl as normal as possible, and plans to continue to operate it beyond the scheduled end of the 2017 season in October.

“Everything is going to remain the same,” he said. “The track is going to stay, it’s not going anywhere.”

Speedbowl fans know what makes the track special, he said, and he plans to keep it that way.

“That is hard to explain unless you’ve raced there or been there,” he said. “It’s the bowl, that’s just the way to put it.”

With the remaining staff, he has been working to establish contracts with vendors, repair the wooden bleachers and get the track ready for an opening weekend this month. He plans to try to hire back the handful of staff members who quit after learning of Bemer's arrest.

He’s also renegotiating with NASCAR, which pulled out of its relationship with the Speedbowl after the charges against Bemer were made public, and with the North Carolina-based INEX racing organization, to sponsor races this season at the track.

A NASCAR spokesman declined to comment on whether it was reconsidering its withdrawal from the Speedbowl.

"NASCAR is aware of the recent developments regarding the New London-Waterford Speedbowl,” the spokesman said in a statement. “All inquiries for NASCAR sanction by any track operator are confidential, and we would not have any comment on them.”

'Ready to go'

After the uncertainty since Bemer’s arrest, some drivers still were skeptical.

“We’ve heard so many things in the past month,” Ted Christopher, a longtime semi-professional driver, said Thursday. “Right now, it’s all just talk. I’ll wait and see until it happens.”

Rob Janovic Jr., a Waterford native and longtime Speedbowl racer, said Tuesday that he was happy to hear Whitney had stepped up.

"I've gotten pretty gun-shy with all the announcements," he said. "I'd probably joined the ranks of people starting to make plans on Saturday nights."

"(But) it's good that it’s somebody that has been around long enough to know the nuts and bolts of running a Saturday night show at the Waterford Speedbowl."

He said he felt that Whitney's lease with the Speedbowl LLC, rather than Bemer, would put to rest any worries that Bemer would be profiting from the track.

"My 35 dollars to get in is not going to have any impact ... on any of his past transgressions or any of his future transgressions," he said. "The car's sitting there, we're ready to go."

Whitney said he knows when he will be sure that signing a lease on the Speedbowl was a good idea.

“The first race,” he said. “Seeing all the cars and all the people there. I’ll know it’s finally happened.”

m.shanahan@theday.com