University of Calgary - Lot 10

[zero10]

This one is such a long shot I'm not even going to fill in the template until we've had a chance to discuss this a bit.  Does anybody know if there is even a snowball's chance in hell of renting this lot?  It looks plenty big and the north end doesn't have a lot of obstacles.  We could use the south end for parking / grid then the north end for a course.

The concerns I see are as follows:

• Noise / Nearby housing:
  
  • There are some townhouses immediately on the west side of the parking lot
  • There are houses in a nearby neighbourhood to the northwest
• Hostile Administration:  I have a gut feeling they are not at all interested in having us there

Inspecting the lot on a random Sunday (February 14, 2016) there were approximately 125 cars in the lot.  The sign says it is $7/day to park there so that's about $875 in parking revenue they would potentially lose if we were to rent the lot from them.  Those people would have to park at a more expensive lot so perhaps something could be arranged?  My suggestion would be that we pay $1000/day for the lot, and that they lower the rates in adjacent lots on days we rent so that the people who are used to paying $7/day can still do so.  This puts additional money in their hands as compared to just having people pay to park and hopefully does not anger the regular patrons of Lot 10.

I also think that it would help to have a sympathetic person with some power within the student body or administrative staff.  No idea who that would be (i graduated WAY back in 2010 so I don't know anybody any more) but I do know there is a Formula SAE team still at the university so they have at least a tiny bit of appreciation for motorsports!

[Apex Carver]

Im going to say that you can rule out this venue off the bat. I was on the management side of the Formula SAE team from 2007-2010 and one of the main issues we had was a venue for testing our FSAE car.

Back in 2005/2006 we used to use lot 10 extensively to test the car on weekends (sat/sun) but we were banned from using lot 10 due to the amount of noise complaints from the townhouses directly to the west of the lot. We ended up securing Lot 53 which is adjacent to Crowchild (by scurfield hall) but it was a very tight lot (grass medians) which was barely enough room for our FSAE car and would only be worse for road vehicles.

[zero10]

Thanks for the information!  I was worried that would be the answer.  Lot 53 is definitely not suitable for us.

The only way I can see it working is if with 10 years going by most of the townhouses have changed hands?