All,

It seams to me that some of you have had problems getting a track to race on. This is an easy problem to fix in some areas. I'll detail out some of the steps for you.

1. Find land that needs to be worked that's away from houses.
2. Find out how much the land could be bought or leased for, you only need a few acres to make it easy and can be added on in the future.
2a. See about the owner donating it to a NON-PROFIT CLUB.
2b. Start a non-profit club.
3. Talk to local business that would benifit from a local track. Gas stations, Hotels, Dealerships, on and on. This will tell you the level of support you have from the community and also will allow you to at a later time get sponserships.
4. Talk to the city, state, federal about getting a Grant. That's free money by the way.
5. Layout the track on paper.
6. Once you have the basics it time to start getting some intrest from the land owner. Explain what you want, what it will mean to them, how much money and support you have or plan to get.
7. get tenitive agreement on land.
8. go back and get the sponsership/grants.
8a. Now you have the money and support sign one year rent/lease with landowner.
9. Have club members do the work and get donated lights and stands and stuff.
10. Get track ready to ride.
11. Have local resterant and dealerships at the grand opening.
12. Make sure that you are a members only track and sign people up on site.
13. Maintane flyers at dealerships. The closer someone can ride the more units they will sell.

Have fun. This is very broad and can be expanded to fill in the holes.

Age is not a factor in doing some of this. Unless you are 18 you can't enter into legal contracts.

Just my thoughts.

Smitty

 

Its been my dream to open my own track,I just dont have the guts to
quit my good paying job with benifets to do it.

 

I have thought about doing this. I work for my father in his excavating business. We have enough equipment and manpower to make it a reality. I myself own 65 acres that is **** ground that would be perfect for this kind of thing. The only thing holding me back is the liability insurance. I'm sure it would be cost prohibitive as I live in a small community. I doubt I could get enough members signed up to pay for the insurance.

 

You get the insurance to cover only members while they are at the track. One way to remove yourself from personal liability is to donate the land to the club. Nice tax write off and you still get the use of the land.

If land wasn't out of the realm of affordability in SoCal Id do it.

Wouldn't worry about the small town if you have a city you can draw off.

Smitty

 

Heck yeah man... I don't know of any tracks that are close to towns... all the tracks I have been to are way off in the back country.

What you need to do is go to as many local tracks as possible within a 5 hour radius (people WILL travel a lot to race) and tell them you are opening a new track, where the track is going to be, and ask them if they want to be on your mailing list. If they say yes, give them some paper to right their address, e-mail, name, and phone #. Don't make it a members only track for the tracks first year cause people won't get a membership if they don't know if the track is any good. Just make everyone sign a waiver and make sure you have LOTS of "Ride at your OWN RISK" signs. During your first year, hold a few races, talk to other track owners and if they are starting or currently run a certain series, work out a deal where the series can extend out to your track as well during your second year. Joining a series in your SECOND year is important. When the second season comes around, people will know about your track. When you are a part of a series, you can make the entry fee like $5 or $10 cheaper for your members and since you will be part of the series, people WILL race there no matter what the price is since they want to keep up in points... but when they see that they could start racing there for cheaper, they will be more inclined to become a member. You really don't even have to make it a members only track. If you run the track well, and become involved with the guys that come over there to race, you will get much more business if you just make the track open to everyone. Badlands is a perfect example. There is always lots of people there for practice and races cause Russ is a great guy that will do everything he can to help you out. He stands next to the track with his black flag (hoping he never has to use it) and he is just cheering people on, clapping for them when they get the win, congratulating the racers effort if they didn't win, and just being an all around nice guy. Thats the kind of track people will want to come back to.

Sorry for the long post. I hope I wasn't rambling to much. Just trying to give you some pointers (even though I'm not exactly a business major), I just think it would work better this way.

 

If you build it, they will come. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]