Briarcliff Mx Year End Thoughts

BriarcliffMx

BriarcliffMx

PR Founding Father
As I sit here on a rainy Sunday morning and reflect back on the season, there are so many things that come to mind. A lot of rainy weekends. The year definitely was wet at the wrong time......a lot. We did make several improvements to our setup, many were probably unnoticed to the trained eye. However, they did not come in the form of magic dirt or major equipment, our major improvements came in the form of people, organization, and refining our processes. Connie and her crew eliminated some of our major headaches at the races. She is a saint. Then we added the Malvern super crew with our top notch guys. Over 17 flaggers, 4 between staging and the start box, 2 roamers, and a dirt crew second to none. These are the real heroes the people that continually help Briarcliff Mx become bigger and brighter each year.

So now what? Where do we go from here? We invest in facility, infrastructure and eventually more equipment. We have major plans in the off season to expand parking, drainage, and track width on jumps. We will be building a packer roller to pack in the dirt when the rain is coming. In the spring we plan to mix in organic top soil in the places that pack in sooner in the summer. The massey will be fixed. We are installing more PA, a viewing deck around the announcers tower, and we are painting everything......and I mean everything. Come may 2014 you will notice what we have done. Thanks for helping us build the Cliff!
 
Jeremy: I have never been to your track and from what I hear your facility is 1st class, and the proof is the big events heading your way in 2014. I worked with Ballance from day 1 and am still working with them on their new business plan. We held the ME Area Q in 2013 and had about 850 entries, the ATV Nat'l about 625. The ATV Nat'l takes up more parking than a 900 entry MX event. We actually closed off 5 acres this last year we were dozing for amphitheatre #1, and made the parking work in about 10 acres for both events. There was room for more during the Area Q. The ATV Nat'l was packed but worked, it rained and not many spectators came out. The year before we had to park spectators off site.

Some mistakes we made was trying to get a PA to cover the entire facility. The Nat'l events we ended up using a FM transmitter that most in pits are used to and our PA was basically useless out in the back 40 anyway (money wasted). But we did have top notch PA system everywhere people where watching the race.

Another request from ATV Nat'l folks was wifi service to broadcast event across nation. Even at a local race folks told us our cell service sucked so that upgrade helped both cell and web to cover the whole property.

The things we learned the hard way normally had nothing to do with track or racing but having such a large crowd camping for 4 days. 24 security on ATVs a must (if one is EMT trained big plus), the ATV crowd was parking at gate a day before we opened on Thurs and normally backed up highway. That caused a few civil matters ($$). The ATV folks want a dedicated Pro pits, that could have direct access to staging and fenced. We never got there but the pro pits where secure overnight. Need a septic service to come by Fri and Sat for RVs, but even doing that all will dump on your property they leave Sunday. Clean-up after each event, 4 man job whole day, that filled two mid sized rented c & d rollbacks.

We rented golf carts at both events and sold out ($200 wknd). T-shirt sales were a bust at Area Q and last regional we did. Moto Tees does ATV race. Speaking of vendors all wanted power and water and that expense of putting in 6, 400 amp service boxes and water hookups never did pay back. But we plan to rent those spots at the music facility ($500 a weekend).

We had arrangement with victory for grass repair costs due to rain events. Last year I bet we towed out 300 rigs the other 200 got out after they spun a 1000 foot rut (does everything ATV rider own a damn raptor??).

FYI, having your clean up crew think they are helping by trying to pull out an 18 wheeler with a the tracks Polaris Ranger is not helping!!

Sorry so long I'm watching it rain waiting on the Browns to come on (and kick the sheet out of the Bungals).

If you need anything you can call by glad to brainstorm with you

Good luck.

Steve H
BG KY
 
Thanks 186!

That's a lot of good info. We have an fm transmitter, I just want the spectator areas and immediate track areas to have better sound, these four strokes make it tough. I would imagine the atv event is even tougher. We do have good Verizon service, wifi is a possibility. Currently we can park in ten acres, we will have 15 when we are done, plus overflow onto our "c" track, which could be another 15-20 haulers. Each battle race has generated 15-20 yards of trash, I was thinking a 30 harder for the atv national, do you recall how big the roll offs were that you were using?

I know all about the trash detail, this year we set a record by having it all picked up in one day from Battle weekend. Planned on security, and the portable guy will be there Friday and Saturday, we did that this year. About how many portables did you have at both?

I never considered te golf cart thing. Did you do that at both? Did you charge for pit vehicle passes.

I too waiting on the brownies, first football game I get to really see all fall, with the exception of a buckeye game.
 
BriarcliffMx said:
As I sit here on a rainy Sunday morning and reflect back on the season, there are so many things that come to mind. A lot of rainy weekends. The year definitely was wet at the wrong time......a lot. We did make several improvements to our setup, many were probably unnoticed to the trained eye. However, they did not come in the form of magic dirt or major equipment, our major improvements came in the form of people, organization, and refining our processes. Connie and her crew eliminated some of our major headaches at the races. She is a saint. Then we added the Malvern super crew with our top notch guys. Over 17 flaggers, 4 between staging and the start box, 2 roamers, and a dirt crew second to none. These are the real heroes the people that continually help Briarcliff Mx become bigger and brighter each year.

So now what? Where do we go from here? We invest in facility, infrastructure and eventually more equipment. We have major plans in the off season to expand parking, drainage, and track width on jumps. We will be building a packer roller to pack in the dirt when the rain is coming. In the spring we plan to mix in organic top soil in the places that pack in sooner in the summer. The massey will be fixed. We are installing more PA, a viewing deck around the announcers tower, and we are painting everything......and I mean everything. Come may 2014 you will notice what we have done. Thanks for helping us build the Cliff!
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This is why BC is successful. In your face, consistently talking about improving, not afraid to disagree and shut people up if needed.

This is how you run a successful mx facility. If you can't commit to that don't expect the success that comes with it. I want to move to central ohio.
 
We used two 30 yard rollbacks. The porta guy brought 20 units. One by gate, one for big dogs in tower, two in staging, rest in pits. Track had real restrooms with 4 stalls each. and 4 shower stalls. If you have 15 acres of parking you'll be good. We did sell pit passes at both.

The wifi (hotspots) also helped with credit cards sales for the moto tees rig. Last year I noticed some vendors had their own hotspot service, but we went around and gave them our track wifi password.

Don't worry about the ATV event they have this down like clockwork probably give you an outline. The Area Q at Ballance was run with same structure.
 
team186 said:
We used two 30 yard rollbacks. The porta guy brought 20 units. One by gate, one for big dogs in tower, two in staging, rest in pits. Track had real restrooms with 4 stalls each. and 4 shower stalls. If you have 15 acres of parking you'll be good. We did sell pit passes at both.

The wifi (hotspots) also helped with credit cards sales for the moto tees rig. Last year I noticed some vendors had their own hotspot service, but we went around and gave them our track wifi password.

Don't worry about the ATV event they have this down like clockwork probably give you an outline. The Area Q at Ballance was run with same structure.
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2-30 yarders???? Wow.

I plan on having 50-55 gallon cans with a crew running around changing them out. Every year we add cans it seems to get better. Last year we had 32, so we plan to add a few.

What did you do for power wash water? I'm planning on elevating a big tank, then add a horizontal pipe at waist level and plumb in about 20 valves with garden hoses to allow for wash water. Should speed up the fill time. I have seen some bad setups for this at the races, I want to do better.
 
BriarcliffMx said:
2-30 yarders???? Wow.

I plan on having 50-55 gallon cans with a crew running around changing them out. Every year we add cans it seems to get better. Last year we had 32, so we plan to add a few.

What did you do for power wash water? I'm planning on elevating a big tank, then add a horizontal pipe at waist level and plumb in about 20 valves with garden hoses to allow for wash water. Should speed up the fill time. I have seen some bad setups for this at the races, I want to do better.
Click to expand...

Don't mean to speak for Steve, but they had an underground system with Hose Bibs coming out of the ground. Most of the tracks this year had that for the nationals minus Steel City and a handful of others. A few tracks we had to go to the water truck and wait in line for water.

I think with what you want to do Jeremy will work well. The individual hose bibs around the track usually had someone who figured they were special and were hooking up their rig to it constantly or leaving a pressure washer hooked up to it all day.
 
At some locations, probably those that didn't have hookups, a water truck drove through the Pro & Pro-Am pits to get those teams filled up. Gotta keep them filled & happy.

Having an extremely organized staging process helps. Unadilla had the best one I've seen. They run 2 "pens" with 20 stalls in each pen. 10 stall on the left & 10 on the right. Each pen is label 1-20 with that being the rider's gate pick. At the entrance to staging, they used large white boards with the Moto # and what Moto it was in each staging pen: "Moto 9 - 450B." They were always staged two groups deep with 1 on the line. I think it helped reduce a lot of confusion and was fantastic as a rider: everything was drawn out for you.

I think most places charged for any/all pit vehicles or they had to be registered. Pit bikes, UTVs, 4x4s, etc.
 
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