Grand Prix of Boston

I really wish we could get some proper investigative journalism in this town.
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If only a local paper could write Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalism that someone could make an Oscar Award winning movie out of. If only...
 
underground said:
If only a local paper could write Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalism that someone could make an Oscar Award winning movie out of. If only...
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Fair point and touché. Note how long ago those articles were, though, and that they were under a different ownership. Also note(and the movie depicts this very well) that the Globe had also helped ignore that story for over a decade, despite being presented with the evidence earlier.

The current Globe is a long way downhill from those days when they finally found the guts to stand up to the Church. And that is exactly what drives me nuts. And yes, I do subscribe to keep my dollars flowing. And instead of the brilliant work you reference, I get Shirley Leung. When it comes to the world of development, permitting, how the BRA functions, etc, the Globe never got out of its bad old days of ignoring structural problems, or even covering for them.
 
So I was tangentially involved in this effort. The straw that broke the camels back was a Boston Conservation Commission ruling. IndyCar filed an RDA with the BCC. (Request for Determination of Applicability - basically a document that asks the CC to determine whether or not it has jurisdiction over a project). IndyCar assumed BCC would say that they don't have jurisdiction and IndyCar did not have to file an Notice of Intent (my guess is they thought they'd get a positive ruling because they're on existing streets and they had the Mayor on board).

Not so fast my friend. Pit row was going to be built in a kind of sunken area off Cypher Street. That sunken area is apparently at least partially in a flood zone.

So BCC returned a positive determination of applicability. This means IndyCar would need to file a Notice of Intent, BCC would have to hold public hearings, and anyone that could establish standing could try to block the project (by opposing at the hearing and/or by appealing). And it's VERY easy to appeal a ConComm finding. This could push the project out months (years even).

So in this case, yes, 10 people on Twitter can shut down an event. Just the threat that there is an organized group that will appeal is enough to put the kibosh (at least short term) on an event.

All that said, I have no idea why IndyCar decided to shoot their way out of town so thoroughly. There's no way they get this done in another city between now and Labor Day. They already had months of design into the Boston track....
 
AFL, thanks for the insight. I've got a few questions. The last time I dealt with BCC directly was over a decade ago. That project had strong Menino backing but was also partly in a flood zone. The BCC asserted, and my counsel grudgingly agreed, that they had no leeway to ignore a flood zone in a RDA. Menino support notwithstanding. Is this your understanding of the current state of BCC affairs regarding flood zones? I really doubt they can just skip over that but I do not claim to know this definitively.

Next, was that part of pit row the only thing in the flood zone? If yes, were there other options for the pit row? I assume making a change of that magnitude so late in the game would've been huge. Might have thrown the first race into next year for all I know. But in the long term, was that pit row truly not movable to another location?

Lastly, some media reports are suggesting, without attribution, that the race organizers could not provide evidence of financial ability to meet their obligations. Did you see anything along that line?

Thanks. If confidentiality prevents response, understood.

The way they have burned bridges on their way out the door smells of a smokescreen (mixed metaphor alert). But I'm guessing when I say that.
 
He flood zone shouldn't have killed the race though. They could have moved the pit someplace else. I think there's something else going on. They really tried to throw the city under the bus.
 
So, the local promoter has been thrown under the bus by Mayor Walsh and the national IndyCar association, jointly:

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/lo...ycar_pitch_for_race_at_suffolk_downs_rejected

Sample quote:
"While it is disappointing that IndyCar will not race in Boston this year, we look forward to continuing our work together to bring IndyCar to Boston in the future," Walsh and Miles said in a joint statement. "Boston has always been a great partner for IndyCar and we are confident that with a strong local promoter the race can be a great success."

The statement's reference to a "strong local promoter" is a clear signal they don't want Boston Grand Prix or Casey involved. Sources said Miles is angry at Casey for his surprise move last week to blow up the planned Labor Day race in the Seaport District without telling anyone at IndyCar or City Hall.
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"Miles" is Mark Miles, the CEO of Hulman and Co., which owns the Verizon IndyCar series. He, like Walsh, learned about the blow-up via the media. Truly amazing.
 
I wonder if they can find a local promoter who is capable of putting this on without financial backing from the city, though. plus the opposition crowd has a win and I'm sure if Walsh tries it again there will be much bigger pushback.

I don't understand why he wants this race so badly. It's just making him look bad.
 
West said:
AFL, thanks for the insight. I've got a few questions. The last time I dealt with BCC directly was over a decade ago. That project had strong Menino backing but was also partly in a flood zone. The BCC asserted, and my counsel grudgingly agreed, that they had no leeway to ignore a flood zone in a RDA. Menino support notwithstanding. Is this your understanding of the current state of BCC affairs regarding flood zones? I really doubt they can just skip over that but I do not claim to know this definitively.

Next, was that part of pit row the only thing in the flood zone? If yes, were there other options for the pit row? I assume making a change of that magnitude so late in the game would've been huge. Might have thrown the first race into next year for all I know. But in the long term, was that pit row truly not movable to another location?

Lastly, some media reports are suggesting, without attribution, that the race organizers could not provide evidence of financial ability to meet their obligations. Did you see anything along that line?

Thanks. If confidentiality prevents response, understood.

The way they have burned bridges on their way out the door smells of a smokescreen (mixed metaphor alert). But I'm guessing when I say that.
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Agreed on BCC. I don't think they can just gloss over a flood zone. There were other areas for pit row, but that presents a few problems:
1. They'd need to take a useful space from BCEC or Massport (e.g., the BCEC parking lot or one of the Massport parking lots). You can imagine taking over a parking lot for several months in the seaport in the summer could be expensive. The brilliant thing about the space they were hoping to use is that's it's fallow right now and has old train tracks running through it (so presumably can't be developed anytime soon).
2. Alternatively they could try to secure one of the large private parcels in Southie. But that would require tweaking the course and negotiating with a private landowner (again, not cheap - I know, I've dealt with Pappas).
3. Moving pit row is a pretty major redesign. Pit row is on the critical path of the construction schedule. So spending another month designing a new pit row would have made it nearly impossible to finish pit row and install the grandstand in time for the race.

I assume the media references about financial obligations are related to the performance bond IndyCar was required to get. The deal with Boston said IndyCar would provide Boston with a bond (basically promising to put everything back together after the race) by May 1 or before they start construction. When May 1st came and their was no bond, the city got nervous, but in IndyCar's defense, why would they spend money getting a bond if they didn't have all the permits in place to start construction?!?!
 
AmericanFolkLegend said:
3. Moving pit row is a pretty major redesign. Pit row is on the critical path of the construction schedule. So spending another month designing a new pit row would have made it nearly impossible to finish pit row and install the grandstand in time for the race.
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I have sympathy with them on this point. Seems the new flood zone map came out in mid-process. I had that happen once ages ago (different deal than I was referring to above, not in Boston), it was a hell of a set back. That might have punted them into 2017, and one of the articles from the racing press said they'd owe the national IndyCar organization a $1.5M fee if this year's race didn't come off. If that's true, Ouch.

AmericanFolkLegend said:
I assume the media references about financial obligations are related to the performance bond IndyCar was required to get. The deal with Boston said IndyCar would provide Boston with a bond (basically promising to put everything back together after the race) by May 1 or before they start construction. When May 1st came and their was no bond, the city got nervous, but in IndyCar's defense, why would they spend money getting a bond if they didn't have all the permits in place to start construction?!?!
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I have a lot less sympathy here. I heard it was a Letter of Credit, a far more financially exacting thing to provide than a bond. If I'm the City, and you're going to temporarily alter my streets, I'm going to have a LOC before you get permits. Companies I've been with have had to post LOCs when there was a need to screw up a stretch of street during construction, and if memory serves, we had to post them pre-permitting.

I think this group was just too thinly capitalized. They may also have been disorganized (as they've been accused of in the media) and there was some amazing political ineptitude at the denouement. And the flood zone thing may have been an additional severe crisis that may have crushed them for 2016 even if they were well enough capitalized to otherwise get it done. But I suspect they just didn't have sufficient cash, even with the sponsorships, the ticket sales, and some presumed television revenue in the offing. And so they were right at the edge of the cliff anyhow, the BCC ruling came down, and for the re-design challenges you note, they threw up the white flag.

Still should have had the professionalism and courtesy to call the folks at the national IndyCar organization and City Hall before calling the media.
 
^Totally agree with you about how unprofessional things got at the end.
Question on the LOC: doesn't a bank usually require you to have most of that money in deposit before they'll provide an LOC. If that's the case how can anyone pull this off without having $10M+ in the bank? Are the promoters of these kind of events usually that large (and liquid)?
 
AmericanFolkLegend said:
Question on the LOC: doesn't a bank usually require you to have most of that money in deposit before they'll provide an LOC.
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Yes. In my experience they want to see all of it, not most. So a Letter of Credit is damn near the same as posting the cash into escrow; you get some slightly greater ability to thwart a disputed call on a LOC, not much. Collecting on a performance bond is a pain in the ass, by comparison, as it's more like an insurance policy - so the bond surety has all the motivation to fight like hell.

AmericanFolkLegend said:
If that's the case how can anyone pull this off without having $10M+ in the bank?
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They can't. From what I've seen in the racing press, this seems to be a problem that has come up a bunch for local IndyCar organizers, which in turn implies that the national organization provides zilch for cash support.

AmericanFolkLegend said:
Are the promoters of these kind of events usually that large (and liquid)?
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I don't know much about car race promoters, so I don't know how big most are. But I imagine this indemnification issue is why most races happen on tracks and not on city streets: might have taken a long time for those Nascar (and other) tracks to grow from their humble beginnings up to the huge affairs they are now, but all along the way, they controlled their actual race course. None of this asking permission to race stuff, not to mention all the hassle of putting a race car track back to city streets. For IndyCar, aside from the main Indy 500 and a few other tracks they run on, it seems like they've only managed to get long-term stabilized city street races in Long Beach and St. Pete. Elsewhere it's been turmoil. Boston is just the latest episode.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Who vetted this psychopath?
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I've only got the scantest idea from what I've seen in the racing media, but if we were going to bet on the answer, my money would be on "no one" at the national IndyCar organization. Or maybe I should say "organization". Seems like the national franchisor does pretty much diddly at the local level and maybe not much on finances. I assume they organize TV contracts and the umbrella Verizon sponsorship, so that's some value added to the local folks, but other than that they maybe just sit back and collect fees. And if the local promoter flounders, it flounders alone.

At the Boston level, I would also say the vetting was done by "no one". I'm more confident in that answer.
 
rinserepeat said:
He flood zone shouldn't have killed the race though. They could have moved the pit someplace else. I think there's something else going on. They really tried to throw the city under the bus.
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They could have just gone to the hearing gotten the rubber stamp approval and then seen if someone would actually challenge the permit. Yes it was apparently an unanticipated risk, but not a certainty that anyone was going to cobble together ten or twenty grand to file for an injunction with a real lawyer and expert testimony. Maybe it was the straw that broke the camel's back, but it was still just a straw.
 
Everyone who would welcome seeing an event of this type in Boston should consider a trip down to Lime Rock, CT over 4th of July weekend - and see the Daytona Prototype (our version of the Le Mans prototypes) and GT cars race in the Sports Car Championship Series (formerly the American Le Mans Series).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeatherTech_SportsCar_Championship

Or take in a 24 Hours race at Daytona some January. They put on an amazing event!!

Here's a great sound clip of the V8 and V12 Ferrari's from Silverstone (FIA/WEC Series)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvzPmzLrLZ0

Daytona Ferrari's....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOL6eZ4OHOQ


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sczBWIucpq0


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJphf17lIOM
 
odurandina said:
Everyone who would welcome seeing an event of this type in Boston should consider a trip down to Lime Rock, CT over 4th of July weekend - and see the Daytona Prototype (our version of the Le Mans prototypes) and GT cars race in the Sports Car Championship Series (formerly the American Le Mans Series).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeatherTech_SportsCar_Championship
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Unfortunately, there will be no DPs at Lime Rock this year, just GTLM, GTD and PC. But GTLM is the Corvette vs. Ferrari vs. BMW vs. Ford GT vs. Porsche war, so that will be worth it.

As for myself...well, I hedged my bets early on and still have tickets to see IndyCar at Pocono. The series is banking on 2 options to replace Boston, either Gateway, an oval outside of St. Louis, or Watkins Glen in the Finger Lakes of NY. If they do the Glen I may well schlepp out there.

But, in general, I've been pretty down over the last week. It would have been a childhood dream come true. :(
 
tangent said:
They could have just gone to the hearing gotten the rubber stamp approval and then seen if someone would actually challenge the permit. Yes it was apparently an unanticipated risk, but not a certainty that anyone was going to cobble together ten or twenty grand to file for an injunction with a real lawyer and expert testimony. Maybe it was the straw that broke the camel's back, but it was still just a straw.
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There's no "rubber stamp." That went away with the days of corruption. Now you need wetland scientists, LSPs, etc. You want a ConComm "rubber stamp" go to Florida.
And it doesn't cost money to file an appeal. It costs money to win an appeal. A relatively educated person can file an appeal that will hold things up for 180-270 days. Then there's a hearing. And if the appealer doesn't spend money and loses, guess what? He can not spend money and file appeal again. I'm 4+ years into a very routine hearing that keeps getting appealed. We've won every single judgement and the judicial summaries are embarrassing for the appealer, but he keeps adding 6 months!
 
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