Motorsports Gateway in Howell is letting drivers hit the pavement now, not later. The development has opened its 1.7-mile South Circuit to members of its Drivers Club, and anyone signing on for the 2027 season can start driving right away, weather permitting, with no annual dues charged for the rest of 2026.
The offer comes straight from the development itself, which tells prospective members to join the Drivers Club for 2027 and begin driving the South Circuit immediately, weather permitting. According to dbusiness.com, the South Circuit is now open for members, giving the Howell facility a functioning track to show off while the broader campus continues to take shape.
The course itself is built for speed and technicality in equal measure. The same report describes 13 turns and 133 feet of elevation change, plus a half-mile straightaway where cars can top out around 150 mph — numbers that put Motorsports Gateway in the conversation with serious regional road courses rather than a casual cruise loop.
What a Membership Actually Gets You
Motorsports Gateway frames a club membership as more than track time. On its membership page, the club says a membership is the entry into unlimited track access and full club participation, though it also notes that all memberships remain subject to availability, club rules, approval and final agreement terms. Those caveats suggest the club isn't simply selling open slots to anyone who shows up with a credit card.
The timing of the no-dues-through-2026 offer lines up with where the project stood roughly a year earlier. Per the same dbusiness.com report, the current pitch lets new members join for the 2027 season and start using their membership immediately, weather permitting, with no annual dues charged for the remainder of 2026 — effectively a bridge period meant to get cars on the circuit before the calendar turns.
From Soft Opening to Member Track Days
The South Circuit's debut didn't happen overnight. More than a year earlier, in October 2025, mlive.com reported that the complex had soft-opened a 1.7-mile driving circuit, with club representatives saying membership stood somewhere in the 60-to-70 range and that the goal was to reach 100 members by the end of that season. That figure reflects where things stood at the time of that report, not the club's current membership count, which hasn't been independently verified since.
Pricing for both garage condos and club memberships has moved before. The club's own site notes that in October 2023, it announced increases across the board: interior garage-condo units rose from $429,440 to $493,860, end units moved from $439,940 to $505,930, and the initiation fee for an Individual Drivers Club Membership climbed from $35,000 to $40,250. Those adjustments came years before the current no-dues offer, underscoring how much the membership structure has shifted as the project has matured.
Garage Condos Anchor the First Phase
Track access is only part of what's planned trackside. The initial development phase calls for 68 trackside Garage Condos, with units planned to start at $599,990, according to the same dbusiness.com account. That report also describes Motorsports Gateway Howell as the first phase of a 273-acre motorsports-anchored, mixed-use district, positioning the current track opening as an early piece of a much larger buildout rather than a finished product.
As first reported by Crain's Detroit Business, the Howell project includes a membership-based driving club alongside garage condominiums and a planned automotive innovation park, reflecting the mixed-use ambitions behind the site. For now, though, the concrete development is the track itself: a 1.7-mile circuit that's open, a membership offer with the dues waived through the end of the year, and a club willing to let new drivers in before the 2027 season officially begins.
