Kent’s slot car raceway brings racing to the next generation

In a world that revolves around time and money, Mirgs Slot Car Raceway is focused on neither.

Located at 1157 W. Main St. in Kent, it is a place where time stops. Owners Dale Mirgliotta and his son Nick just plain like slot cars—playing with them, building them, racing them, and tweaking and tuning them to make them go ever faster.

They opened Mirgs Slot Car Raceway in November 2024, intentionally aiming for a place where people could just have fun.

“That’s the biggest thing behind the whole deal,” Nick said. “I just want people to see that we still have a raceway in the area, and they can try their cars. We wanted to create some kind of sense of community, a place where relatively like-minded people around motor sports and slot cars could gather and have some camaraderie.”

Their goal is to pass their passion onto a new generation of slot car enthusiasts, one lap at a time.

Describing Mirgs as a niche hobby business, Nick said slot cars racing is a low-cost family-friendly activity that’s not going to break the bank. Customers can rent 1:24-scale cars, each about the size of an adult’s hand, and a controller, for $12.50 a half hour and $20 an hour. The Mirgs will act as teachers and mentors, and likely won’t kick customers out when the time’s up.

“We want them to have fun, maybe get interested in it, maybe buy their own car,” Dale said “Ten bucks for the whole day.”

Mirgs sports a 135-foot multi-level road course full of twists, turns and switchbacks. Each of the eight lanes has two electrically charged copper braids spanning the length of the track. When a person connects a handheld controller to the chosen lane, they activate the electric motor and drive system. Pull the trigger and the car moves. Pull the trigger harder, and the car moves faster, all but becoming a blur.

The trick is reducing speed on the curves just enough not to crash, flip or jump into another lane. Too much speed on a curve and the cars can even crash into each other. It happens.

“Your car will deslot if you’re carrying too much speed into a corner or around a corner,” Nick said, demonstrating and laughing as he spoke.

There’s also a two-lane drag strip scaled to simulate the quarter-mile real deal. On it, the cars truly do devolve into blurs. The Mirgs also plan to install a shorter HO (1:64)-scale track.

The pair agreed that it takes about six hours of play to be competitive. Five or six months of dedicated practice can well lead to pro-level tournaments, Nick said.

Not that there’s money in it. Bragging rights prevail at Mirg’s own competitions, and at regional, national and international tournaments, Dale said.

Yes, international. Though the heyday of slotcars in America is decades past, it remains a popular hobby in South America and Europe, especially in Italy, Nick said.

Once bit by the slot car bug, customers like to buy their own cars and tweak them to seek higher speed points. Mirgs sells all manner of parts and decals. Prices start at about $70, and can rise to about $300 for a fully tricked out model.

Where customers work on the cars is…in another car.

Nobody knows how, when or why it got there, but the building Mirgs occupies was literally built around a steel interurban car someone deposited next to the structure. The Northern Ohio Traction & Light Co., which built it, went out of business in 1932.

Once upon a time, before automobiles rendered them obsolete, people used interurban trollies to travel about, said local historian Bruce Dzeda, a train enthusiast and author of Railroad Town: Kent and the Erie Railroad.

Wooden interurbans populated local tracks while steel versions took people longer distances. The cars ran every hour on tracks down the center or along most main streets, so they were more convenient than waiting for trains, he said.

Dzeda believes the car has been there for at least 50 years, though it may be closer to a century. Since neither NOT&L nor any other company had tracks crossing West Main Street, he imagines that it may have been trucked in on a flatbed, for reasons long lost to history.

Property owner Phil Roberts, who also owns the Kent Barbell Club next door, said he has never seen any steel wheels or tracks in his forays underneath the car. (There’s a trap door in the floor towards the front of the car.) His theory is it was set on blocks, and remains so.

Trucking in an interurban car may have been the easiest way for a previous owner to add more space onto his or her building, Roberts said. Or, the car may already have been there for some unknown reason, and a series of owners simply used it to best advantage.

“It’s a big mystery. I’d love to know how that happened and what their thinking was when they bought it. I really don’t have a clue,” Roberts said. “It is a fascinating piece of history.”

Though the car has long been mostly gutted, the original lockers still exist and a pocket door separates what would have been the motorman’s cabin from the rest of the car. The original windows are hidden behind plywood walls.

The Mirgs are installing long workbenches along the car’s interior walls, perfect for customers to fiddle with their cars to their hearts’ content.

Mirgs is open from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, from 3:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Fridays, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sundays. Race days are Thursday nights and Saturday afternoons. Anyone is welcome to watch, and customers can bring their own meals or enjoy coffee, soda and prepackaged snacks for sale.