<font face=\"Verdana, Arial\" size=\"2\">...scca will see a 80% rent increase for 2005....entry fees will be a $80 to 100 increase...</font>
Holy S***, Batman!
Economically (and "businessly") speaking, it seems that things are coming to a head at LRP. It appears at first glance that LRP values its HPDE and school customers more than its SCCA weekend. From a business perspective, I can understand that; less hassles, less expense, less exposure, better community relations. LRP has a finite number of "competition" weekends available, so it's in their best interest to increase its prices to match the demand; they can probably get those rates from PCA, BMWCCA, and/or Ferrari Club if SCCA balks (supply versus demand).
However, I have to wonder if they're possibly shooting themselves in the foot. This situation reminds me a lot of general aviation and airports. Places like Bridgeport Airport realize they make a lot more money from corporate jets than they do from the "fish drivers" in Cessnas and Pipers. It's in their best economic interest to minimize the number of fish and maximize the sharks. However, they overlook the total number of fish versus sharks, plus the related business that the fish bring (restaurants, line workers, repair shops, tie-down fees, etc). Also, they tend to forget that all those shark drivers used to be minnows...
This sitatuion with LRP can be looked at one of two general ways: that LRP truly wants SCCA to remain a customer but its expenses are growing rapidly and it needs to raise revenues to cover them; or, economically speaking the SCCA weekends have a much lower profit margin than what can be gotten from other uses (HPDE, Barber) and they must raise prices to cover that margin and/or ask SCCA to go away. Could be (and probably is) a combination of both. Either way, the result is a significant increase in entry fees to the SCCA drivers. The result of THAT is a decrease in the number of folks wanting to pay to run at LRP.
Dick, I'm not one to complain about entry fees, because that's a small part of the total expenses for a race weekend. But the Region/Division must expect that as the prices rise, there will be a decrease in quantity demanded. Frankly, I think we're out of whack right now, because the quantity demanded is higher than the quantity we can supply, but I hope that increases of entry fees to $300-325 for a weekend at LRP won't bounce us down to the opposite extreme, where we won't have enough folks to cover the costs. It does appear the gravy train days are over, though.
People from the Mid-Atlantic and points south are AGHAST when I tell them how much it costs to rent LRP for a race weekend. Absolutely astounded. Everyone to a "T" says they would not put on an event at that price. Unfortunately, it does no good to go into an economic discussion and let them know we're smack-dab in between two major high-population metro areas with only one true road course, and that one being one of the highest-reputation ones in the country, and further that the chance of getting a new one built in the general area is about that of a snowball in hell, and that the LRP track management is WELL aware of all this...
However, if this doesn't bring the urgency of finding a suitable location and building a New England SCCA club track, frankly nothing will. I think it's high time to add a fee on top of entries to work towards a long-term solution to this problem. It will only get worse.
GregA
