Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

It is not how far apart the tracks are. It is how large an area of the Midwest the teams come from. Any weekly track in the Midwest needs to draw cars from rather far away to survive. It is not comparable to PA where the teams are a lot more concentrated. 

I think both tracks did ok last season but folks got upset at some things Chuck did just to pull cars away from Knoxville & NSL shows. He could have cooperated with Knoxville, Jackson & the NSL from the start last year and everyone would have been better off. His arrogance rubbed a lot the wrong way.

I am saddened to see the track close and a price tag no regular promoter could afford & still hope to make a small profit from the place. It's my fear it will be purchased by someone who will eliminate the race track part & use it for other things that can bring in money faster. 

Besides his Dollar Loan Centers, Pawn shop/Radio Station & Rock N Roll academy that he runs,  what other businesses does he have?

I'd figure that he would clean house & move everything out of the state of South Dakota.

so...what happens to all that bitchin about tracks within 300 miles of each other on a Saturday night?

Lincoln 1845 ft/.35 mile T1=118MPH 
Eldora 2287 ft/.43mile T3=135MPH
Port 2716 ft/.51 mile T3=TBD
Grove 2792 ft/.53 mile T3=135MPH
Selinsgrove 2847 ft/.54 mile T1=136MPH
"I didn't move to PA from El Paso in search of better 
weather." Van May

     It's been drowned out by the bitchin about everything else I guess.

Does he own the race track outright or does the bank own it?  Reason I ask is that if there's a loan on the place the property could end up under the bank's control. 

As far as the asking price, for most people that would be financial suicide to buy a dirt track for 9.5 million when most turnkey tracks sell for far less than that.  I've heard of people buying dirt tracks and going belly up after not having reinvested in the track for years.  In those cases potential buyers are faced with a ton of work to upgrade the facilities but the asking price is generally doable.  In the case of Badlands all the improvements have escalated the costs way beyond anything the average promoter can afford.

I'd rather have seen someone buy the place, not make any significant improvements and have to unload it than this situation where someone comes in and throws obscene amounts of cash at it and prices the facility out of reach.  Some of the replies in this thread threw around a few NASCAR names and as much as I hate to tell others how they should spend their money I'm afraid that my be the only scenario that could save the place.

I'm half an hour north of Minneapolis St. Paul but anytime something happens in the Sprint Car world within 300 miles we feel the ripple effects up here.  With the NSL it was a great concept but it did pull some cars away from some of our specials.  With Jackson dropping 360's and Husets' future uncertain it isn't clear what that's going to do for Sprint Car racing in the upper Midwest.  There are a million Modifieds around these parts and no problem for a place like Deer Creek to book USMTS and pull a ton of local cars to run with the travelers.  With Sprints it's a different story, specials around here often see drivers town in from Jackson, Husets, Knoxville and even Grand Forks and Winnipeg on occasion.  Whatever happens is sure to upset the apple cart....again...

Stan Meissner

I wonder what happened to the other investers in Badlands Paul Stanley and

Vince Neil come to mind, i dont know how the concert venue went over as far as attendance 

but it seems to have fallen all on Chucks shoulders

     The venue had one well attended Weezer concert.

I REMEMBER THAT NIGHT!! I thought that Karl was going to end up in the local constabulary, but cooler heads prevailed.

I want all tracks to succeed, and would never think of bad-mouthing anyone who was willing to own one.

I am lucky enough to work at one of the best tracks 
anywhere.

They should just burn the place down. If people want to race they should have to drive to Knoxville. 

Absolutely nailed it. I had a bad feeling about this guy from the very beginning and unfortunately, I was right. Regardless of what his intentions were, the way he was operating made it obvious to me that even though in the short term, some teams were going to benefit from it, the long term outcome was anything but good. I don't live out there so I don't have a horse in the race so to speak but I hate to see such a storied facility fall like this. The asking price is a big problem. I just don't see anyone laying down anywhere near that kind of money for it unless it's a very wealthy fan (such as Tony Stewart, Tod Quiring, Kasey Kahne etc.) buys it and keeps it going basically as a public service to the sprint car community. It will take at least a decade if not more to see any return on the investment & that's a damn shame. Hopefully something positive happens with this deal.

We hate to see a nice race track sit idle.  I'll bet Brennan is smarter than 99% of us in regards to business, and we can surmise the track is an independent corporation and hopefully for our sake, gets sold for pennies on the dollar at auction after it sits empty for a year or two, or three, etc. so a new promoter can afford to get it back open.  Property values in Brandon are not high.  He may get a large tax right off from the loss on his investment to offset some of his other profits he may realize when liquidating his other SD businesses.

 The payday loan centers in SD were committing legal usury and are cash cows that allowed him to earn and invest such a large amount of cash into the track.    That's a great way to spend his other business's profits, but I am more pleased that people who mostly work for a low wage are better protected against a loan center business model that elected officials should have never allowed to exist in this day and age.  Brennan was following the law with the Dollar payday centers, but saying they provide a important and neccessary service to people in need of quick cash means you turn the other way while taking advantage of uneducated and hopeless people in need.

 I looked up the facts of the typical payday loan center interest rate.  In SD something like 430% apr.  That's where the money came from that remodeled the track.   We were enjoying a beautiful track built on the backs of the lowest minimum wage earners who according to statistics are on average in debt to the payday loan centers for 83% of the year.  It's not just someone elses problem, I bet we all have friends and relatives, young and old that use these payday centers across the Country.   Next thing you know, Cakif will legalize weed.  I hope the track goes to a non predatory business owner.  Interesting conundrum.

A little research showed a $300 loan paid off in 1 month you would have paid back $417 at a typical payday loan interest rate and $309 at a 36% interest rate. Easy to see why Chuck didn't want to see the 36% cap to pass!

If Paul Stanley was one of the investors at the racetrack, the past couple of months haven't been very good for him.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/team-732025-kiss-league.html

You don't have the slightest clue about Brandon property values.  Yes, our property taxes are relatively low compared to the rest of the USA. My propetty tax went up 25% alone for the 2016 year. No complaints here but your argument goes out the door cuz you have no idea about the property values here. 

BIG J

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."

     What does property taxes- high or low- have to do with anything?

The drivers/teams will certainly miss the big bucks he was paying them to race.  As far as the track, don't see it open for many years to come and certainly the voters in SD have a lot of blame---screw them.  The voters should take a class in "short term" interest rates (like a month or less). Most people on here, especially in SD and the rest of the country don't have a clue what percentage rates mean.  I borrow my friend a buck today and he pays me back two bucks in a year that's a 100 percent interest rate, if instead I tell him he has to pay me back two bucks tomorrow, what's that a  36,000% interest rate.  Seems unimportant but thats how clueless the voters were in SD. 

I wonder, my brother-in-law (at one time) would certainly be interested in those two new first class Caterpillar Graders.  I asked two security guards  at Badlands if he leased them and both said Chuck doesn't lease anything, he pays cash.   Have no idea how much but a wild guess for a 250HP grader would be $250,000....times two. 

 Lawlessness and liberalism equals Hell.  NY City, 
Detroit, Seattle, Chicago, Minnepolis, etc. We saw it. 
Burning hundreds of buildings, a thousand assaults and 
dozens of murders. Getting worser and worser.

And like most threads on this forum, by the time it gets four or five pages long now we're talking about property taxes......

     Use some logic here. If the speedway is being closed because the loan centers are being closed, that suggests that the loan centers were subsidizing the speedway. That means that the speedway is not self-supporting the way it was operated in 2016. That's the reason for the speedway being for sale. The speedway and the loan center vote are two seperate-but intertwined- issues.

     If the speedway was turning a profit, what derned fool would close it?

I think it's Bush's fault.....

The voters are to blame?  That's the fanbase he was trying to capture (the voters).  By blaming them he dooms all of his businesses.