Years ago we ran on the Convair Division of General Dynamics parking lot
in San Diego, CA. We paid $50 for the privilege and had our choice of
several lots. Suddenly the availability was cut off - without
explanation.
Eventually it came to the following explanation: The Convair Facilities
Management Dept in San Diego wanted to resurface the parking lots. They
submitted aerial photographs to the St Louis Corporate Management. The
photographs showed the "tracks" of a recent autocross. St Louis
Corporate asked what the tracks were, Convair Facilities Management
responded that they were just a recent sports car event. Bottom Line,
we never got to use those parking lots again.
And the Point Is: You can lose a track or parking lot for something you
have no control over. BTW, Qualcomm Stadium (then known as Jack Murphy
Stadium) used to require an ambulance on site. Then relented to a EMS
certified person, and last I heard there is no emergency personnel
requirement.
The pendulum continues to swing......
Tom_Holt wrote:
>
> Jay and Pat etc...
> Before you go and make a lot of assumptions let me give you more of the
> story than Jeff did:
>
> The site :
> The site was at Southwest Texas State University's football stadium.
> They are in the process of changing from NAIA to NCAA division 1. They are
> doing everything they can to make the campus and the athletic facilities
> look as good as they can to impress the NCAA officials. Last January they
> applied a sealer coat to the lot and restriped it. Texas Spokes was unaware
> of this until we showed up for our first event at that location for the year
> in February. We realized we were in for a probem about half way through the
> day when we could see the sealer coat wearing down and the new stripes
> beginning to fade. This was not caused by CP cars or ESP cars or Karts... It
> was caused by running 133 different cars through the course 5 times each!
> 665 runs will destroy a thin sealer coat on any lot, regardless of the cars,
> be it Miata, Neons, Camaros or karts The damage was minimal at the start
> line and most prominant at the tighter turns.
>
> Reaction:
> The only thing we could have done better is perhaps call off the event
> during the 3rd or 4th heat (we run 8 heats during the day) as soon as we
> realized we were doing the damage. We chose to continue. Monday morning our
> club president was on the phone to our contact at the stadium. At that time
> we offered to restripe the affected areas or do whatever we could to make
> things right. We also made several follow up calls to see if any decision
> had been reached. We never heard anything back from the University until the
> day they recieved our payment and insurance certificate for the event that
> was supposed to take in less than one week. At that time we were informed
> that the facility was no longer available for autocrosses.
>
> Cost:
> Our rental fee was a measley $150 per day. Admittedly not enough to make
> them care if they lost the business. HOWEVER....our club has been VERY
> active in raising money for a scholarship fund in the name of one of our
> past members who was an alumnus of the university. At last count over
> $20,000 in the seven years since Steve's death. Our club has been on the
> President's or Vice President's List of contributors every year.
>
> Karts:
> Beginning this year, our club does run karts. When we approved them, we
> decided to only try them at our largest smoothest site while we got a feel
> for running them. This site was our second largest and smoothest. We had
> decided to allow karts at this site, starting with this (cancelled) event.
>
> Tom
--
Jim Ourand,
http://www.RaceNumbers.com
or to just see the photo album go to:
http://live.altavista.com/scripts/community.dll?ep=660&c.pi=39181&c.ol=2&groupid=37928
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