This is the local track that I race at just to give some perspective of a successful method of how they have adapted over time:
Thornhill Racing Circuit
Basically, the same owner used to own an indoor track (
The Clay Pit) that was in the city many years ago, it offered HVAC and he operated an on site hobby shop. It was a repurposed warehouse that was not ADA compliant due to severely limited space. The track averaged between 20-30 entries for regular club racing and was struggling to break even, only reason it worked for as long as it did was because the owner has as recycling business and this was extra space not used for his primary business so overhead expenses were minimal. After a couple years into operation, a guy in a wheelchair showed up to race, he raised hell over the track not being ADA compliant, he also refused assistance for us to help carry him up a few steps onto the driver stand which was also a narrow plank to make the most space possible for the track itself. Right about this time the city fire dept conveniently did a "routine fire inspection" and changed the classification from "warehouse" to "meeting conference rooms" and demanded $40K in upgrades to bring the entire building to fire code, including ADA ramps everywhere which would significantly shrink the track even further. The track shut down almost immediately.
After several years of careful planning and seeing several other tracks come and go, the same owner bought a ranch style home that is located outside city limits located on 5+ acres of land. This time he built a very nice driver stand that is ADA compliant, but now there are no permanent/enclosed structures to have to fuss with any fire codes.
It started out first with only a 1/8 track, then they added a 1/10 clay track which would migrate to a 1/10 turf track... as interest in 1/8 club racing has dropped, they shifted their race schedule to run 1/10 turf more frequently. More recently, they decided to expand the program to include oval racing and the level of interest is staggering, I can't wait to see what the turnout is going to be this weekend for their very first oval race.
I think tracks need to adapt to a program that is more popular, even if it's something that the owner isn't necessarily interested in doing, very rarely do I see the owner run on the turf track, his passion is 1/8 nitro, and same with oval, I doubt he has much interest there either, but I see oval as a "gateway" with presumably less challenging skill necessary to get started and draw in new blood. Then you can expand the program from there.