Empire builder: Larry Miller has come a long way since his auto-parts days

"It's a world-class race track," he says. "Auto Week (magazine) said it is the best track built in the last 23 years. It is really neat, and the funnest thing I've done. . . . I think the state will love it."

Actually, Miller tried to build something similar to the track twice before, but problems prevented it — for a time. First, he bought a smaller race track in Mead, Colo., and bought a cornfield next to it hoping to expand the track.

"But I did a foolish thing. I bought it and paid to design the new track before I received the zoning" for permission to build, he says. When it was denied, Miller was able to persuade the city to hold a referendum on the zoning. "But I lost by a margin of something like 93 percent to 7. I could see I wouldn't win there and moved on." He is in the process of selling that track to a developer.

Next, Miller looked at building the race track on 333 acres in Salt Lake County — and again paid to actually design a track there. But he waited years for needed permits from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers. "They never said no. But they never took any action. I finally said enough of this, let's go where we don't need these permits."

So he found 511 acres in Tooele County. When he hired an architect to design another large track after the previous two attempts were abandoned, Miller says the architect asked, "I have only one question. Are we actually going to build it this time?"

He did.

A mature empire

All of that has led to a large, mature business empire. Miller says the days of needing to cut and paste together risky deals are gone — and he misses the thrill he got from them. He says it is relatively easy to attract backing for deals now.

It's so easy that sometimes his empire creates new businesses without him knowing — that critical mass that allows for easy expansion.

"For example, I found out that we had opened a new Fanzz store somewhere by reading it in the newspaper. I said, 'Come on, guys, you have to at least tell me,' " Miller says.

He said he similarly didn't find out beforehand that the Utah Jazz marketing team had opened the Jazz Dancer Studios. He says executives of some of his businesses often come up with ideas for new ventures or expansion, and he tries to let them proceed where possible.

"I don't want to quash people. Everyone has dreams. We can't do everything that someone has dreamed for us, but we can do some. Fulfillment comes for them by trying some. Within reasonable guidelines, we allow them to try some ideas," Miller says.

Deals with Larry