Ray wrote:jon-mullen wrote:Perfect except for that big housing development that looks to be ~1/4 mile away, yikes...
Yeah, that neighborhood is pissed about the track being there but they accepted the track over having 1800 small homes built there. I'd rather have a track. You could do what Homer Simpson did and charge for parking on your property by the number of axles on a vehicle.
I bet you can sell your property with a big win in some years to racing nuts who want to live there.
It is impressive to look at the list of people Hellmund got on his team: Billy Joe 'Red' McCombs is worth an estimated $1.3bn. McCombs sold his shares in the Clear Channel advertising firm in which he remained a board member.
McCombs wrote:Clear Channel will help with promotion. This is a natural for us to present because I think the media in America will respond to it, and that is the key to all of it. The company is the biggest in the world in its field. We look at it as what it would bring to our state here then we look at what it has brought to other countries. The good thing about this is that you are joining the world fraternity rather than being at a state or national level so the international scope is what truly interests me. My F1 investment is comparable to the other sports teams I have had ownership in, it reaches right up there.
We view the circuit as a year-round activity and that is what we are hoping to capture. We would like other top level series to come too.I think there will be a big financial return but that will come because of the ancillary programmes that will be put in place and not the race itself.
Further partners are Bobby Epstein of the Austin private equity firm Prophet Capital Management and former MotoGP World Champion Kevin Schwantz. MotoGP is a likely target as mentioned by McCombs.
But the list does not end there. Hellmund managed to get $25 mil out of the Texan tax payers to cover the start up cost of paying Ecclestone an estimated $20 mil with an annual increase. Finally he got Tilke on board who is an almost certain guarantee that the circuit is finished on time, meets FiA and FOM requirements and all the environmental requirements of the most picky country on earth (Germany). Tilke did the Nürburgring to the full satisfaction of the German authorities and his expertise in this field will make the Austin project sail through all environmental impact audits Austin and Texas may be thinking of. Hellmund simply has to make sure that he specifies a circuit that makes best use of the terrain features and pleases the American public.
I am pretty much sold on this project and I believe that the recent noises about alternative US locations are mainly there to get a second US GP. There is no way around the fact that Canada and Brazil will each need a second American venue to team up with for a usefull fly away. You can do Brazil and Austin in autumn in one go, but you still have Canada to twin with something like New Jersey or Indianapolis.