KANSAS CITY, KAN. ? Just as Kansas starts a new campaign promoting itself as a tourist destination, the state is preparing to close its travel center at Kansas Speedway, the popular auto racing track.

The Kansas Travel Information Center, which opened in 2002, isn’t drawing as many people as the one it replaced, and the state needs to save money because the tourism budget is being cut by $700,000, to $3.8 million, for the next fiscal year.

“This was not an easy choice,” said Scott Allegrucci, the state tourism director who’s resigning next week. Becky Blake, who succeeds him and is the longtime director of the Manhattan Convention and Visitors Bureau, said she was not involved in the budget talks and the decision to close the center effective June 30.

“I’m appalled,” said Connie Hachenberg, director of the Leavenworth Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We just spent a lot of money on a brand image, and now we’re not going to service those tourists we think we’re going to be bringing in?”

The new promotional campaign, developed by a Lawrence advertising agency for $700,000, uses the slogan, “Kansas, As Big As You Think.” It was announced in January with an eye for this summer’s travel season.

The center at the speedway is several miles away from the one formerly used, along Interstate 70. That one attracted about 75,000 visitors a year, while the new one is averaging only about 30,000, Allegrucci said.

He said the state’s other two travel centers, in Belle Plaine along Interstate 35 near the Oklahoma border and in Goodland along Interstate 70 near Colorado, each draw about 160,000 people a year.

When the Kansas City center was moved, the new location near the speedway was touted as giving the state a better shot at attracting motorists from another major highway, nearby Interstate 435. But the center is on the west side of the speedway and the adjacent Village West shopping and entertainment district, while the east side draws the heaviest traffic.

“We know there needs to be a travel center over there,” said Allegrucci. “But we need to put it where the people are, not where they aren’t.”

The speedway built the center and leases it to the state for $1 a year, with the state paying $97,000 annually for operation and maintenance. Allegrucci said the decision to close was made jointly by the operating partners — the state, the speedway and the Unified Board of Commissioners of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kan.

No decision has been made about what to do with the 5,000-square-foot building, said Kansas Speedway president Jeff Boerger.