Several years ago, I took the Alameda Assistant City Manager, The Public
Works Coordinator and the Police Chief to lunch to discuss our using
Alameda Point. At the time, I had had an office in Alameda for 20 years
and they were all both personal and professional friends (and all long
since retired). I followed with a formal letter to outline our needs. We
got nowhere, which I expected because I know the town pretty well.
I know John Kelly has spent much time chasing Alameda over the years,
and actually attended the original Planning Commission hearing for the
PCA Conditional Use Permit. I believe that PCA is sort of a sub-lessee
of Area 51 Productions but is required to secure its own Use Permit.
I many times find it humorous how we in the SCCA view ourselves and
what we are asking parking lot owners, Recreation Departments, and
Municipalities to permit us to do on their property and with their
insurance. And why we think its a normal thing to ask. I used to find it
frustrating but I'm old and mellow now. If anyone believes bringing our
own insurance indemnifies a third party by the way, they clearly don't
socialize much with the legal profession. And if anyone knows paving,
I'm not sure I would let us do this on property I owned.
Within the confines of the immediate Bay Area, we have the additional
problem of the social stigma of having fun with a culturally suspect and
universally disliked device. This is lessened quite a bit when you
travel to the Central Valley, gradually diminishing to behavioral
normalcy somewhere east of Reno. We commit a serious error of omission
when we aren't honest with ourselves about this and how it is perceived
by the average citizen.
To the practical side of securing new sites, unless autox is a permitted
activity under and existing Permit (i.e. Oakland), It required a
Conditional Use permit, revocable at any time, and that means standing
up in a public hearing, with public records published and scrutinized by
the scouring hoards ( we used to call them our neighbors),and asking an
elected official to allow you to race cars on land within their
jurisdiction. And, to compound the problem, you first have to get
through staff to assemble your proposal.THERE IS NO UPSIDE IN THIS FOR
STAFF OR ANY ELECTED OFFICIAL. There is only downside. The hoards
outnumber the autocrossers. Sorry to say, they always will.
I understand that most if not all sites that have come to us came
because one of our members just noticed a usable piece of pavement and
had a personal contact we could use as an in. The opportunities for that
are dimensioning as urban land use sprawls. Eventually, all of our site
will stop being available to us. All of them. We are not the highest and
best use. We need be real about how low intensity our use and utility
are to the real estate world, and to redouble the effort to lock up a
site of our own, along with the political permission for the use.
There are some simple things we ought to be doing now. The first is that
we don't have a comprehensive business plan. We simply don't know how
much we could afford to pay because we don't know how much we can make
over a project lifetime (nearly all use permits are for 5 years,
renewable). Second, we need to scrutinize our Supplementals and purge
things like "93 decibels", substituting phrasing like, "same as the
State of California". Don't start a sub thread on this. No Planning
Commissioner understands what the first means; everyone will understand
the second. Thirdly, although its fun to philosophize about where the
program ought to be going, I might suggest that we all focus a little
more on our common interest, which is getting a site we can't be kicked
off of.
I'm not sure what set me off this morning. I slept well last night.
Might be the coffee.
Your autox buddy,
Tony
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