Venue Ideas

[NickST]

Some other venues I was thinking about

Stampede Grounds:
The Stampede grounds has 4 parking areas that could be suitable within the grounds. However, I also noticed they have a very large parking lot in the middle of the oval (about 100m X 150m, with a staging area off to one side).

Then if you look to the SE, across the river, there is an odd shaped lot that is about 70m x 90m... give or take a bit, also with a huge staging area outside of the lot to the South. It is in a pretty secluded area.
https://goo.gl/maps/jHRXjA6fbSJ2

Cross Roads Market:
This is a pretty big lot, I measured about 160m X 120m. The market is closed Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Might be a good spot for a weekday event?

Enform Lot:
Not sure if this guy is big enough... there is a section that has a lot of concrete plugs, and then about  a clear area of 60m x 120m?
https://goo.gl/maps/BXevenBCf5M2

Cargill Meat Solutions:
These guys have a fenced off staff lot in the back that measures about 125m X 75m. Right near the airport, nothing around it that would be an issue for us. The nice thing is it even has a separate entrance and is fenced off from their business. If they close on weekends, it would be a pretty stellar location.

[nnywg]

Agree we should revisit the Stampede grounds.  Previously this has been ruled out as they want you to rent the lot by parking space at the full day rate.  This is silly expensive.  Perhaps the person in charge has changed over since the last time the question was asked, and/or the motivation to raise funds post-flood is higher.

Another suggestion is the McCall lake golf course lot.  The course and land is in limbo and I haven't heard if it will even reopen this year.  There are some islands; we could work with them as-is.  It would be cheap to demo them and leave as dirt if we thought the curb was too much risk.  Probably the City would need to do this work due to unions.  Some more money would allow a bit of pavement in select spots where islands were removed.  We might be able to solve this one quickly with a call to 3-1-1.

Edit:  Very inexpensive to cut some 4x6's diagonally to make little wooden curb ramps in key areas.  Portable enough to take them with us when we go home.

[NickST]

Another one to check out might be the Cross Roads furniture gallery. They are open 7 days a week, but they never use more than a quarter of that lot... if we could even use just half, it would be 70m x 200m long.

I also don't think their business has been that good in the past few years, so some extra cash flow for renting out something they don't use anyway would be pretty attractive to them. I think they were even leasing it to a dealership for overflow for a bit.

[nnywg]

Another one to check out might be the Cross Roads furniture gallery. They are open 7 days a week, but they never use more than a quarter of that lot... if we could even use just half, it would be 70m x 200m long.

I also don't think their business has been that good in the past few years, so some extra cash flow for renting out something they don't use anyway would be pretty attractive to them. I think they were even leasing it to a dealership for overflow for a bit.

I think this is an excellent idea, but we'd need the whole back/north lot.  Google Earth says it's about 3.5 acres, the lot we drive on at the Westerner is 4 acres + parking for reference.

[Reijo]

When the Crossroads changed hands in the early 2000's the new owner did not want us (we ran a few events there when the Indoor GP kart track was there) ... the furniture store owner.  Is there a change of ownership?  He was an east-Indian guy and was pretty rude toward us at the time.

[E6Cueman]

Century Downs? Don't think it's been mentioned here yet.  I was at our new horse race track last September, and they were in the middle of grading a HUGE parking lot.  Not sure if it was destined for asphalt or going to stay gravel, but it was properly sized.  A weekend time event probably conflicts a their busy periods, but I wonder if a mid week evening would be a possibility...

[NickST]

When the Crossroads changed hands in the early 2000's the new owner did not want us (we ran a few events there when the Indoor GP kart track was there) ... the furniture store owner.  Is there a change of ownership?  He was an east-Indian guy and was pretty rude toward us at the time.

I don't think business is all that great. Anytime I've popped in there looking around for rugs or other pieces, usually on weekends when they should be getting more customers, it has been totally dead. It is all generic, not designer... which is not what people are looking for anymore. You wave a few grand a month at him right off the bat and he might come around.

I also wonder if they are the legal owners of that land in the first place? If he isn't, that would explain why he would get defensive/rude about it right away... no value to him if he doesn't own it. Most places like that are just leased long term, not actually owned outright. I have some time tomorrow, I could go see if the dealership is still using it for occasional overflow (if you look in google maps, you can see they are using about half in that shot)... if so, we can talk to the dealership about it first, and I bet we could find a direct contact person and go right over the head of the store owner.

[nnywg]

Century Downs? Don't think it's been mentioned here yet.  I was at our new horse race track last September, and they were in the middle of grading a HUGE parking lot.  Not sure if it was destined for asphalt or going to stay gravel, but it was properly sized.  A weekend time event probably conflicts a their busy periods, but I wonder if a mid week evening would be a possibility...

I will inquire about this.  Very close friends with their marketing manager, and another manager there.  Can you be more specific about the location of this lot?  We would need to be well away from the stables on the northern end.  Is there a way we could set this up for spectators safely (ie. clearly marked viewing location and don't have to sign our waiver)?

Edit:  I've sent an e-mail regarding the general idea, size of lot and location.  Will respond when I hear more.

[NickST]

Regarding the Crossroads furniture store:

They are actively advertising it for lease, so these would the people would have a direct line to whomever owns the lot:

http://www.romanre.com/pdf/2222%20-%2016th%20Ave%20NE%20car%20lot%20-%20new%20fomat%20-%20revised%20Jan%202015.pdf


Steve Toye
Associate
403-452-4628
stoye@romanre.com

Dan Luijkx
Associate
403-452-9586
dluijkx@romanre.com

Dean(Dino) Truant
Broker
403-452-9536
dtruant@romanre.com

[zero10]

Crossroads sounds very viable to me.  They are asking $15000/month for that section on the front, but are including some indoor space and power and such for that price.  Maybe they'd rent the back lot for $8000/month?

[zero10]

Sorry I was posting from my phone last night and wasn't able to address all of your suggestions.


The Cargill lot seems to be peppered with those little power posts for plugging cars in - sorry but I don't think that one can work.

The area at Enform without the plugins is too small to safely run a course in, sorry again

The lot SE of the stampede grounds (https://www.google.ca/maps/@51.0295578,-114.0441374,220m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en)  looks quite promising, if the area on the west end of it could be used for grid and both east lots could be used for a course I see a lot of potential there.  Anybody know anything more about this place?

[NickST]

It is definitely owned by the Calgary Stampede, they have a building on the smaller adjacent lot.

Judging by the parking stalls, it looks like a storage lot used for horse trailers during the stampede events. So I don't think they use it much at all for the rest of the year... plus they can't even give you the "We will rent it to you based on the per stall price" line.

There are some houses to the North, but they don't have direct line of sight thanks to the industrial buildings there, and they would really have to go looking for us to find out what is going on. If we did get the lot, I'd strongly recommend that to stay under the radar, people come and go on 26th ave, and nobody drives directly into the residential area.

[E6Cueman]

I will inquire about this.  Very close friends with their marketing manager, and another manager there.  Can you be more specific about the location of this lot?  We would need to be well away from the stables on the northern end.  Is there a way we could set this up for spectators safely (ie. clearly marked viewing location and don't have to sign our waiver)?

Edit:  I've sent an e-mail regarding the general idea, size of lot and location.  Will respond when I hear more.

My impression memory is that it was west of the main building... but at the time it was nothing more than acres of gravel.

[NickST]

Another location that I came across

This is Propak:
https://goo.gl/maps/T7DzJvceyDo

I have heard that currently they have laid off about 50% of the staff, so their lots might not be as utilized right now. The rear lot might have some clear areas that could work for us.

[Stuart]

Most of that Propak yard is being used for storage of equipment so there is usually very little free space.  Now if Adesa 1km East empties either of their lots after an auction I could see either autocross or rallycross being possible but they don't seem to be turning over the lot as often as they had in the past.