Pasco County meeting record

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TranscriptWhat was said at each appearance is below it. Machine transcription, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 96% of 148 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.

1Sep 8, 2020
Board of County CommissionersR1Regular businessNo disposition in the minutes
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44m
Moore
Okay, great. So we we can do then. Uh pardon me, we can move on, Commissioner this Starkey, this is under your name. R one presentation USA BMX proposed uh BMX track for Pasco County. Go ahead, please.
Starkey
Yeah, come on up. And introduce yourself and um uh commissioner, you saw some of this presentation at the uh tourism board. I I was online watching, um but I I I didn't realize they were on on your agenda until too late for me to get there. But um I am very excited to uh have you listen to this wonderful presentation. We've been meeting for about Is it a year now? A year. Um, and they came to me because of my background with
cycling and biking and um And uh and they were look actually first looking for some property in my district. But we think we found a good site. And please you have to introduce yourself and name an
Delaney Morrison
address for the record.
Unidentified speaker
Yes. Yep.
Delaney Morrison
Good morning. My name is Delaney Morrison and I'm the president of Ride Local, a nonprofit registered in the state of Florida. We've made some booklets that
Moore
I we need your address too. You can just give yours your business address if you like.
Delaney Morrison
Okay. Our address is 3040 Cedar Trace, Tarpon Springs, Florida, 34688. So we're just across the line in Pen in Pine.
Moore
If you'd like to um hand those to the clerks and um they will pass those out. Thank you.
Starkey
And I understand Keith has told me he is online and then we have our tourism director here as well.
Unidentified speaker
Great.
Starkey
We
Delaney Morrison
also have the rest of the board that should be joining virtually the rest of the of my board. And then I believe Justin Travis from USABMX, he's the director of New Track Development, is on as well. And Justin may have some things to chime in with if I know there's like a muting at some point. So.
Uh we do have a PowerPoint to go along with this. Had it teed
Starkey
up a second ago. Here it is. That's me. No. I don't wear
Delaney Morrison
pads.
All right. First and foremost. 30 years ago? With long hair. It's black and white photos.
First and foremost, thank you for having us today. We have been working with uh Commissioner Starkey as well as meeting with Keith and Adam uh for about a year now, trying to um to go through the the logistics of bringing a BMX track and and ultimately a a bike park to um Chubasco County. Um our mission statement with Ride Local is to create um safe and well-organized environments um for locals to hone their skills in extreme sports, mainly BMX uh racing, which
is what our um our background is. So there's a lot of extreme sports that we think we can bring into this park that we'll show you later. But that's that's our main goal here. We think that Pasco County being named the sports coast as well as being in my backyard and everything that you're doing with the Wiregrass Sports Complex and real this will really just round out your offerings here in the county to to really touch on almost every sport you have available for your for the citizens here.
Our goals in doing this is to establish a world-class track experience for locals and visitors alike, as well as leverage the experience of myself and my husband Kirk Morrison, the owner of JR Bicycles, the largest BMX store in the country, to create this track experience like no other. We also think that we can use this event center to host other types of events that aren't just BMX racing, um, to bring the community together for things like the Boy Scouts
of America meetings, all pro dad meetings. Um Here at this facility. The biggest thing about BMX is that this is a family sport. There are two-year-olds. My son was out in Rock Hill riding this weekend. He's four. Up to, I know there's uh people in their 60s still racing. So this is one of the few sports that you can do alongside your children, not just sitting on the sidelines watching them or waiting for practice to be over. in in some of those instances. So
and of course we want to create an open channel of communication with our board, USA BMX, and the county to make sure that we're providing the best possible experience for all of the residents here. Our board is comprised of five five local residents here, three of which are born and raised here in the Tampa Bay area. I'm a third-generation native here. We are also all local business owners in our own right. Doug Bevis is the former mayor of Oldsmar and
helped bring the BMX track to Oldsmar, as well as Duff Campbell. A longtime resident here in the Palm Harbor area and a local realtor. Adam Sharp is uh, well, he's the crazy one on the board, as you can see by his photo. Um, he owns a very successful business here in the Tampa Bay area. And then Justin Ritter actually owns a custom skateboard company and also works alongside of us at JR Bicycles, overseeing all of our marketing and technology there.
Starkey
Hey, just a little thing of history. Keith Wiley used to skate uh ride with them down in St. Pete at the facility that used to be down there.
Delaney Morrison
So my husband was a racer a long time ago. Um And uh used to race 4J on our bicycles and it came up for sale when he was 15 and he convinced his parents to buy it and live his dream of of owning a BMX store. And uh we're in our 30th year now celebrating. So it's it's it's worked out for us. And one of the reasons that we want to bring another track to the community is that this is this is just what we do. This is we eat, sleep, and breathe BMX. USA BMX is the governing sanction for all
of BMX racing in the country. They probably run one of the best programs in the world as far as BMX goes. They are getting ready to celebrate their 45th year, and they sanction over 300 tracks in the country that run local, regional, state, and national races. They oversee all of the scoring as well as the infrastructure that we use for the scoring and for managing the races. They also provide all of the education and the certifications that we need, whether it's coaching
or being a track director. Um like I said, Justin should be joining us. He was telling me he was having a little bit of technical difficulties. USA BMX has done a great job in actually helping to grow the sport of BMX in the last few years. You can see that in 2018, the sports and fitness industry showed that bicycling was the number one fastest growing sport in the country, among all others. We also know that this is going to continue to grow as we have seen in the bicycle industry in the past six months. How much
the volume has increased on purchasing bicycles to find something that you can do during the COVID social distancing things. So we know that BMX is going to continue to boom here for the next decade. At least we know that it's a solid sport, but it is growing. And it we're happy that an organization as big as this industry has recognized our growth. Growth. USA BMX has a has something that they call 360 degrees of community integration that we're gonna
touch on. They do um they have an education arm as well as recreational programming and the sports tourism. So, regardless of what your interest in all of this is, um they have done a great job in integrating into the full community area. The first thing is is their um the educational arm that they have. This includes a track modeling program, a read-to-ride program, the STEM program, and they also send motivational speakers all over the
country into these certain elementary schools. This is made for second through fifth graders to do different things that are age-appropriate activities. And then at the end of the week, there's a field trip to the local BMX track so that they can come and see what they've been working on and use. And of course they're invited to come out and ride as well.
This is an Olympic sport. BMX racing is an Olympic sport. I believe we've done it three times now. Um there's actually um an Olympic rider that runs a track down in Port Charlotte, Amanda Carr. Um But it is an Olympic sport um here and and does have a a good solid solid following.
The next integration that they do is recreational programming, which functions just like your normal soccer, baseball, or football programs would. The interesting thing about this, and we're going to use DeSoto BMX here as the example, the DeSoto BMX facility also has baseball, soccer, and football fields. This facility was designed to host championship events across all different sporting activities to be an economic impact for the
state. And as you can see, the local participation here just on a local level is pretty high. BMX was number two out of the five different sports that they offer at this facility. And this this right here is just on the local. level on future slides we'll show you how it affects them on a state and national level as well. So The um the programming is great here. You can do BMX as a team event where you ride with others or it can be very individual for those people that don't want to be on a team.
Um and it can be as competitive as you want it to be. You can just strive for the Olympics or you can just partake in it for um for just local exercise.
The next slide just talks about USA BMX and how they integrate into the community and how they they really are involved with the cities and counties that they that they build in, as well as the tourism market that they continue to work with along the way. And that once it's built, they don't just walk away and turn it over to the local community. They are hands-on with us the whole way through. every day and provide the support staff for the local organization as well as
the county if they were have any questions or concerns with the facility.
The track overview is my favorite part here. Um And and where will the track go? Commissioner Starkey found this piece of land for us that we're very excited about. I believe the next up, let's stay on this slide. This area is just outside of the intersection of 54 and Gunn Highway. It's where the model airplane flying field is now. That's the red area. It's currently owned. By the Utilities Department. It's
23 acres large. The property to the left of it, that's outlined in yellow, is also owned by the Utilities Department. And then the green highlighted area is where the new high school is slated to go. Just below that line is where the Tower Road extension is going to go. So this location off of a major artery in Pasco. County, as well as being in the middle of some huge community developments like Asturia and Starkey Ranch, and some of the other ones being built, is a phenomenal
location to really get to be accessible by the locals and to serve the community well, and to also offset what you have done up in Wesley Chapel with the new Wireglass Grass Sports Complex. The other interesting and great thing about this location is how it relates to the other tracks in the area. There are two other tracks in the area, which is shown on the next slide. You have Oldsmar BMX track, which is currently not operating, but has about a year before they're up and running again. They're rebuilding their hill. Oldsmar
is a supercross Olympic style track. That's not what we're proposing here. One in the area is enough. And it's great for pros and it's great for locals to want to strive to get to the next level. But for a mom like me, it's a little bit scary for my four-year-old to be up on the big hill. But they have a phenomenal facility there and they do run a great program over there. Tampa BMX track is actually at Lake Park over off of Dale Mabrie. They've been in that park for as long as I can remember. My one and only day on
the track was at Tampa BMX and didn't even know it was a real sport when I was out there when I was six years old. Thing about this that we really want to highlight is within 20 to 30 minutes you can get to all three of these tracks. We think that this will really bring in some outsiders here and not just the local community. This would be one of the only areas in the country that you would be able to hit that many tracks in a short drive. So we could foresee people from all over the state of Florida wanting to come in and go to three different tracks over.
The weekend, should we be able to plan out the scheduling properly and capitalize some more on those room nights and dining out and shopping in our area? The other thing that we're actually talking about doing at Pasco BMX Park that's different than most other tracks in the country is we're proposing to cover this track for this to be an open-air covered track. There's only two others like it in the country: DeSoto BMX, that we we're gonna talk about a little bit, and then also uh Duke City BMX in Albuquerque. We
think that this is super important here in Florida given the Heat and the rain that we have. Not only will it cut down on track maintenance, but we think it will attract a lot more riders when they can't ride at their local track because it's rained out or it's just so hot to be in all of that equipment. So we're we really think that that roof will will you know set us apart. from just having another BMX track. And just for reference, I believe that there's 15 operating tracks in the state of Florida right
now that are that are fully operational and run year round for the most part, minus the rainy season.
Two things that we've been talking about back and forth is a BMX track and a bike park. Those are two different things. We're most familiar with the BMX track because that's what we do for a living here. But we really want the BMX track to just be one part of the bike park overall. We've used this layout here to show you that there's other areas in the country that are doing things similar to this. Houston is the biggest one that opened last year. They're 27 acres. They do have a world-class
facility that the World Championship was supposed to be held at this year, but got canceled due to COVID. But they also have these other elements that we're talking about bringing in with a pump track, some dirt trails, a flat land circle, and a skate park as well. So just because BMX. Isn't your thing. There's a very big crossover between people who race BMX and ride skateboards and scooters. So, and on the next slide, you'll see our proposed layout here for this. We're
showing this. The next slide's actually going to be clear, but we wanted you to see how it sat on the property before we flipped it sideways for to alleviate any type of confusion here.
And to the right of it would be the parking lot, which right here is slated to be about 240 spaces. There is retention down to the front left corner. And if we can go to the next slide, there's just a little bit better visual of what this track looks like, a little bit more clear here. So the red area is all covered, which includes all the bleachers, the staging, the concession, restrooms. The parking lot. You can see just center of the page is a world-class skate park that would be able to hold national level style events. It
also includes a playground area, a pump track, dirt trails, and then a full skills course all the way around. So if mom wants to get some exercise while her kids are at the playground, there is a designated area for them to do that. as well. And again, this utilizes all 23 acres of that of that land there.
The next slide just talks about the size of the track and an approximate cost just for the track. The track itself is about three acres, and the base cost, not including the roof, is approximately $2 million. The roof we've had estimated at just at a million dollars. So and you can see the photos there, that's from DeSoto BMX. So you can see how that open air roof with the light. would allow for evening events as well as it it really does help with any kind of inclement weather conditions that you
may have. This is the largest style uh facility that USABMX builds here in in the country now. One of the things we've talked about with the covered roof since we'll have so much space is installing solar panels. Um we know that uh LEGO Land had partnered with Tico on some of their parking spaces to install the solar panels that um Provides fuel savings for 730,000 customers. So we were wanting to maybe
reach out to Duke Energy to see if they would want a partner to help offset some of the costs by allowing them to install some solar panels because we will have a lot of square footage of space on top of the roof.
A lot of their electric operating costs by utilizing some of the solar that we would we would be able to generate from back there.
Other outreach ideas that we've had at the park, um, just to let you know that we're really trying to think through everything, is to host parents night out events where moms can drop their kids off and go shopping for a few hours, um, to do the lock-ins for locals and visitors. I know when I was little we used to go to the skating ring overnight, you know, couldn't wait for that sleepover at the skating ring. Um And then again, I was talking about the crossover. So road bikers, there's a lot of adults that road bike in your county is phenomenal for the road biking aspect. But
once you're a bicycle enthusiast, it really doesn't it the crossover between the different sports is very easy and natural for a lot of people. So we see a lot of BMXers that are also into the mountain biking, and the parents are into the road biking. So inviting those different groups to come. and try BMX and try to get them involved as well, we think is super important. And then as well using the parking area for food truck rallies, maybe to be a starting point point for some of the road bike races or road bike gatherings. And then also contacting local schools
to just arrange awareness and bike safety checks that we could do at our park while also allowing them to come and try BMX for free.
The economic impact for BMX is going to be larger than most other local sports here. And I know that that's always important for anybody that's going to spend any kind of money or have this kind of land allocated to an event. The 2019 Sooner Nationals that's held in an inside facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma, you can see that their local taxes that they brought in was. Seventy five thousand dollars. National events, there's approximately 30 of them a year. Their direct
economic impact on average is $617,000. I think that that's a little bit low, but there are some nationals that are held in some not well-known areas of the country. Um, and also some that just don't go as well as others because you can't always predict when there's gonna be a monsoon or hail or sometimes even snow. The regional events that we would also be able to host here have a direct economic impact on average of eighty-four thousand dollars over a weekend. Um and in the state championship series, the
um The events leading up to the finals on average are about 74,000 and then the final itself, that's just a one-day event, is $66,000 of an economic impact there. And these are all events that we would be able to host at this facility through USABMX. The next report is just a little bit more detailed. For Visit Tulsa, they used an event impact calculator detail so that you can really just see what their the business
sales total was just over $2 million over that three-day period. So everybody comes from out of town. I like to joke that BMX were like a bunch of uh gypsies just. Traveling from town to town, but that that's really what it is. You're you're chasing the races and chasing the points, and um you you go where the race goes, which is super cool because we've had friends and family and customers not only from all over the country, but also all over the world. So it's not uncommon for people to travel to to places
like Tulsa, um, Ohio, of course, Florida, um, to chase these events. Yeah. The next report, which might be a little bit small on that screen to see, but is the Gator National in Sarasota, Florida. They um uh revitalized their facility about two years ago. They have a supercross hill there as well. And just pre-COVID they hosted a national there. And over three days they did about 1.6 million as a direct economic impact. So I do
know their ri room night average is a little bit higher here than in Pasco County, but it's it's not double of of what you would be expecting here. So And then the next slide talks about the sports tourism, and we'll jump back to really comparing that to DeSoto BMX because this is at the DeSoto BMX facility. When they've held the larger events here, compared to the other large events that they've held for baseball, football, basketball here, the BMX events, their economic
impact far outweighed all of the other sports. If you combine them together, the state championship alone did $725,000, and the national that they held did $1.1 million in an economic impact versus some of the other sports at that same facility doing you know $400,000. So BMX, because people are known to travel to these types of events, does have a huge economic impact on the area that it That it's placed in.
COVID did shut down racing for um for quite a while because of the social distancing and people not being able to get on on planes and and those sorts of things. And of course everybody was just trying to do their best to stop the spread. So but this is just to show you that even in just after COVID rules were starting to be lifted in certain areas. And BMX, you can still do quite a bit of social distancing. And your team areas, as well as racing, you're wearing full face helmets, and USA BMX
has done a great job of making sure that all of those things are in place. So we wanted to show you that where some other sports really haven't even started back up because they weren't able to because of the social distancing requirements due to COVID, these three events just happened here in July and August. The Buckeye National was in to Toledo, Ohio. You can see that people came from 37 states with a total attendance of 35,000. The Hub City National was in Aberdeen, South Dakota. They still had 34 states represented.
And again, the East Coast National in Maryland just happened a few weeks ago and they had 35 states represented. I can tell you these numbers would definitely increase when you tell somebody to come to Florida with the beaches and bush gardens and Disney World. Um and our airport is super easy to fly in and out of as well. So But we did just want to let you know that we are thinking through those types of things because we know COVID is a concern for a lot of areas. This is the proposed national and state race allocation that we've discussed
with USA BMX. Should we get this facility up and running with that covered roof, they've allocated a national to us for the first three years so that we can directly get back some of that output that we've put into this facility on an immediate return. So years one, two, and three would be allocated to us, and anything after that, we would be able to bid on yearly to be in the rotation. And then the state race allocation is every other year. That's just to split up the season
with the rest of the state. So every uh with the rest of the state tracks. Every other year we would host a qualifying race and we would also be able to bid on that championship race as well. So this is what I have for you here. We hope that you guys are excited about all of this. And as we are, we've we've our crews worked really hard on everything putting this together and we're happy to answer any questions you might have.
Moore
Questions? Questions?
Delaney Morrison
Well we
Starkey
have um Keith. Yeah, we have Keith Wiley on. Keith, do you want to make any comments?
Keith
Hi, Commissioner. Yeah, this is Keith Wiley, Director of Parks, Recreation and Natural Resources. Sorry about the technical difficulties earlier. I think I'm good to go now, hopefully. Um I would just like to add that um this, you know, we did the master plan back in 2015. It was adopted by the board in 2016. And just to kind of point out that a bike park BMX track was listed through the workshop stakeholder process as one of the highest unmet needs in the county. Unfortunately,
um in that plan. This type of amenity is not actually in the masters, master plan or the capital plan. Therefore, there's really no uh no funding associated with it in the future. But it I did want to call out that it is it is listed as a as an unmet meet lead in the master plan. And I do like the concept of a bike park with a pump track, the BMX track, playground, and open spaces. I think that makes it multifunctional, which ultimately just really.
Starkey
And um and then we have our tourism director here and I'm sure he um liked those numbers. I mean those numbers are uh really high and and exciting. So I have been so excited to work on this project and um that location as we looked around the county um When we zeroed in on this location, it it has great advantages because it's going to be next to the high school. So they have shared parking on the weekends for
large events. And it backs up to the Starkey Wilderness Park. And we've been negotiating and working with Swift Mud to have more um Entrances into the park and actually there's gonna be one right near there um behind the public's back in there it's we call it the South Prong or South Bridge. I can't remember, but it there's a bridge actually in it. there's gonna be trails going back into the park back there. So um just a really uh good site and and they're
working on bringing their facility here, their retail facility. And
Delaney Morrison
we actually just went under contract for two and a half acres of land um on um Wellbuilt, which is right over by the W YMCA on Friday. So um we have about a twenty five thousand square foot facility that will move from Largo up into Pasco County here in the next twelve to eighteen months.
Starkey
And explain a little bit about how your business operates worldwide.
Delaney Morrison
So we are uh J and R Bicycles. My husband owns this again. Um he we do primarily just focus on BMX. When we move up into the Trinity area, I think we'll probably be expanding some of those offerings into some some more bicycling genres because it's just a nice and easy crossover. Um but we do have a retail store here in Largo, Florida now. Um we have about 10,000. Square feet there. And then we also do all of our off-site storage in the back of my house. We have a big
barn area. But we do ship worldwide. We ship to uh 27 countries right now. Um predominantly we are an e-commerce business versus a walk-in retail business, but that's just a sign of the times with Amazon and the Walmarts of Of the world, but we do just BMX. And then we also uh we also sponsor a national bike shop team. We've won seven, seven titles, which is the winningest bike
shop team in the country. I think it's seven, might be six. And then we um we also co-sponsor a lot of uh local state teams. Um J and R is just well known in the BMX. Industry world worldwide here. So we think it's a nice crossover. This wouldn't be done for JR, so we want to make a clear designation that JR is a for-profit business that my husband operates, and the nonprofit ride local is something that I would do separately of his business. That if this is a nonprofit to really
just be a community asset here.
Starkey
So is your uh gentleman on from USA?
Delaney Morrison
Justin, are you on?
I know he said he could see everything but he couldn't hear anybody.
Starkey
Yeah, so I I did speak with him we had a zoo Oh he's on. I didn't know if he wanted to mention anything about USA. Justin?
Unidentified speaker
Actually, that's uh Justin Ritter. I'm a board member of Ride Local. I don't see that Justin Travis made it. I'm on. Hello.
Unidentified speakerVoice A
Well, you unmuted me. Here we go. Uh Hello. Uh thank you for for unmute muting me and uh for having me in this morning. Uh Honestly, Delaney has done an absolute amazing job of putting this together. Uh we've been working for months on doing this. Uh and and I really don't have too much to add other than uh I'd be very excited y to work in the community, you come down and visit. Obviously I always looking for a great excuse to vacation in Florida, uh as is everybody else, which is
one of the the beautiful benefits of a track down here. Uh and Uh on a side note, I do have a little bit of a soft spot for this area. So the Tampa Lake Park track that Lane mentioned, uh, I actually used to be the track operator there. So from 2000. Four to two thousand seven, uh, I actually ran that track uh before moving to Ohio to work for the national organization. And so that whole area uh that you guys are in, I've I have a soft spot for. I absolutely love it. And and anything
that I can do personally to help champion the cause, to have this BMX track built or or even just added to the master plan with with hope. of getting it built in the future, let me know uh and and I'm here to bend over backwards for that.
Starkey
Thank you. Um uh Tina Russo is is uh watching us and she just reminded me and I meant to say this, so as you know, Tower Road is the Orange Belt Trail. So one of the most Important trails. I think it's gonna be in the Tampa Bay area. It's gonna be the Orange Belt Trail and that is gonna go right in front of it. So another function of this park is a trailhead for the Orange Belt Trail. And right now we don't have a even have a trailhead for the Starkey Trail. People
are parking on the grass over there on Trinity Boulevard. Um And um and Tina mentions that she also did work with BMX in Hillsborough County. So um I um recall that the legislature helped fund the rowing complex. In Sarasota County. I don't know if our county attorney who lives down in that area knows anything about that, but they got a nice allocation. She was here. And so there are there
are ways that we can look for funds. Um and I'm gonna suggest that we one route is that route also. Um we're gonna be meeting with different companies who may want to sponsor. You want to talk about the sponsorship? Is it the Houston one?
Delaney Morrison
It is. Houston Bike Park is actually sponsored by Rockstar Energy. And if memory serves me c correctly, actually I'm not gonna quote it because I don't know, but it was millions of dollars over over a five or ten year plan to have the naming rights to that type of facility. Um so I'm not afraid to be told. Know on these types of things, I don't hesitate to go and reach out. Um, I've already got an email in to Publix to ask if this is something that they'd like to um you know, to to help us with, but I think that we should be reaching out to to some
of these bigger companies that that are involved in youth sports, whether it be Rockstar wanting to do something else, or maybe Monster Red Bull wants to do something, Pepsi, Gatorade, and any of those types of things. We know Amazon's putting in a facility and they're very big on going green. If you've seen any of their commercials that maybe they would really like this solar Powered initiative there. But we do think that that we we might be able to help find some sponsor money. I just I haven't done this before
to to be able to say with 100% certainty that we can you know find all of the funds necessary on our own. But we definitely want to help out with that process and of course move this along as quickly as we can to to a grand opening.
Moore
Commissioner Yeah's some questions down here that are waiting to Chalk if I thought I saw. My hand up. Did I not see your hand up? Wells, I thought I saw you.
Mariano
Well
Moore
Commissioner Oakley did. Okay, I
Mariano
thought you
Moore
did. I thought I saw it.
Starkey
Oh go ahead.
Mariano
I'll wait. So f funding is what it all always comes down to. and also working with people that are eg existing there. I I'm sure we can find other land for the people to fly the planes there.
Starkey
Oh yeah. We we've got a site.
Mariano
I I like the access of the of the property to to make something happen there. So as far as like funding goes, part of this is gonna Are you coming to Pasco no matter what? Or is this like helping you come to Tasco as far as brand?
Delaney Morrison
As far as our business. Our business is coming. I'm under contract on the land, so we're we're moving regardless of your BMX track. Um we we know that you would be uh one, we're the largest in the country as far as a BMX store goes. To have that within a few miles of the track is you're not gonna find that anywhere else in the country. There are other places that have bike. Store BMX stores, they're just they're not as large as we are. So we are moving into the county. Um, actually, Commissioner Starkey helped help us for a
long time going, What about this piece? What about that piece? Have you driven over here? Um, we actually live right at the border of Pinellas and Pasco County in that Keystone uh East Lake area. And um we we've been looking at this land and finally said, Let we couldn't find a building that we could move into quicker that was large enough and found that land and said it's now or never. And uh we we made the offer and they accepted. So we're we're coming into Pasco County 100%.
Mariano
Are we helping you as far as like jobs incentives and all?
Delaney Morrison
We had talked with somebody earlier about that. We're not opposed to it because we know that we're gonna need to bring more employees in than what we have now. And I'm sure my employees watching are probably like, yes, please bring some more people in because our business has been booming. Um, but I don't know that we're in one of those areas that you were focused on. I know there was an area up in 19 that was a focus. Um create some more jobs but all the help that we can get to to have a successful opening and of course run a more successful business
we're we're willing to take.
Mariano
I think you'll find that I'm sure I'm sure I could take it down that trail trail but yeah we've we've for job job creator based upon a certain level of income there are incentives that are LTF for you so we'd love to help you there. Um is this area served by Tico or Duke? I'm pretty sure it's Duke.
Delaney Morrison
I'm pretty certain it's Duke. We have uh somebody one of our family friends was working in the community center at Starkey Ranch and she said that they were all Duke energy. So being within a mile of their welcome center, I think we are Duke there.
Starkey
Remember Duke is building that facility over by 41, that new Um I don't know what you call it. Bad. With all the wires, that ugly
Mariano
And they they could they could be a a prime sponsor, remember one with the solar, but as well as just having it right there for 'em. Right. Could be a real good thing. Uh and Commissioner Starkey I think you're you're on the money that legislative ask might be a big help. Um and I think with the MPO. Trailhead funding. funding would be a good direction as well to kind of like tie those in together as well. Um So other than that what is what is the ask for the commission that you're trying to
Delaney Morrison
Well I think first we just want to make sure that everybody agrees to this and wants to move forward with this. Um you know we we've done this plan, um the layout, but it was it was really just a a quick shot from the hip to give an overall aspect of what it could look like. Um and then eventually there there will be a budget ask to be included in in in the budget. How much can we offset with somebody like Duke or or another big sponsor? I'm not certain of yet. Generally speaking, the city or the county that one of these tracks goes into does fund
this because it does come back to be an asset for the community as well as the income from the um the tourism that comes in from the from this type of facility.
Starkey
And um I've mentioned with Delaney that you know this year's budget is done for next year, so we're in the planning discussing phase. So um We'll be working with administrator and staff and a legislature and who w whomever to see how we ca what we can do to proceed. It probab you know if all goes well be a phased. uh program and so we just start with the track. Um, but you know, my goal would be to go all the way
because I think that's where we get the biggest bang for the buck with the roof and all that. But this was really just informational to let you all know about it and um to uh I can tell you that this got out. Um I'm I don't know how. Maybe people saw it in a tourism um meeting, but I started getting bombarded and I I don't
Delaney Morrison
Yeah. I actually didn't know that so many people watched those types of either. But I before I got before we could even click off, there were emails saying, This is so great, this is so cool. We were just at a national in Rock Hill, South Carolina over the weekend that we vended at and people coming up to the counter going, Oh my gosh, I live in Bexley, I live in Ballantre, it would be so great to have this. I live in Spring Hill. This is a lot closer for us To drive. You know, we'll be watching. We're behind you supporting this. Generally, when we come and do an ask like this, you
will see this whole place filled with supporters because of COVID. We couldn't do that. And Starkey put me on the calendar a lot quicker than I could put together a video of support from all of the uh from all of the local riders, but the support is here to support another facility. And the the Residents are here too. At the beginning that we proposed this to USA BMX, they said, You're way too close to these other parks. And I said, Let me drive you over there and show you how much building they're doing. We will not
take away from their programs. We will only increase it when you can go to three different types, very unique types of BMX tracks. We're only going to increase you. the participation at all of these tracks by offering this. So we drove them around and they said, Oh my gosh, you're so right. This is the perfect area for this. So
Starkey
and if if you lived in Bexley, you would you know that those their pop tracks, I think they have two, used to be open to the public, but then they're now locked up and only for the residents because they're so popular.
Moore
So let me let me just a just a couple questions because I saw your presentation, obviously the TDC, and I think a lot of that um feedback you were seeing because the Times um picked that up and so did um the Lakers. Um they both wrote articles about it too, but and and Adam's here with us. Um so tell me tell me a little bit about when we talk about your pro forma though. Again, when we talk about funding, um Do we have a pro forma? Do we have a business plan where where the funding would come from? I mean I know we just briefly talked
about it, but we're not going to be able to
Delaney Morrison
I don't have anything that shows where all of the funding would come from. Like I said, it generally comes from the county or city that it that the track is located within. Um we do have we know that the track at this size with the parking lot and roof minus any land cost. Is about three and a half million. We believe that with the full facility, you're probably looking between eight and ten million. And again, that's just very rough numbers because we haven't had anybody bid it out. And it also depends on how extravagant you
want to go. At the park that we were just at in Rock Hill, which is a huge cycling community, they just put in a playground since the last time I was there, and it was like we we were talking. To a local about it, and they saw it like $400,000. It's the coolest playground I've ever seen. My son, of course, thinks that we're getting one in our backyard like this. Um, but it all depends on what types of things you want to put in there. How extravagant do you want to go with some of these things that would really talk about what the what those numbers are.
Moore
So I got Adam, so I so Adam, I told Adam maybe to come up a little bit if you don't mind. Because Y know, what we don't want to give it either is false hope.
Starkey
Uh she knows that there's no money in the tourism right now. It's committed to why to Wesley Chapel. Um it's not in the parks and rec budget, although it's in the needs assessment. So I don't even know if we really need to talk about money right now. This was just purely informational. And to let you know, we're gonna start um working on um seeing if we can find a plan. And um, I think we mentioned to you some of the places we're gonna go to look for money. Okay. And um I'm
sure uh you'll see Delaney here again and hear more about this. And I just hope you're As excited as I am for the community because And Adam, go ahead. You know this is gonna be very popular.
Delaney Morrison
One other thing that we've talked about uh
Moore
Oh can eat can I have Adam talk real quick? Okay,
Delaney Morrison
go
Moore
ahead
Pasco County
Uh good morning. Uh Adam Thomas, Pasco County Tourism Director. Yes, I'm the T D C Board's in full support of this. I'm in full support of this. This is a great opportunity for not only our citizens, but to to really diversify our product as a sports coast and as our destination of sports events. So the economic impact is strong, the visitation is strong. You have a great partner here with Delaney. I think it's a great opportunity. Opportunity for us to really move forward. But funding obviously everything comes down to funding.
Starkey
It's always an issue.
Pasco County
Okay. Thanks.
Delaney Morrison
Yeah. Just one other um avenue for funding that I I was just thinking about while we were in Rock Hill is they're funded by Novant Health, and I believe the Louisville track is funded by one of their big hospital groups there too. So something like Advent Help here or Bay Care may also um be another avenue that we can we can look at as well. I do know that they have funded two other BMX facilities that are larger facilities that it it it might be worth something that we could talk to them on. Why did they think it was good to get their name out locally and and you know put up
some money to to have a lot of people.
Starkey
We We actually have Advent Health on our skating rink, ice skating rank, so Um it does it does happen here as well.
Moore
Yeah, and you have obviously H A H C A hospitals too. We have
Starkey
and you have
Moore
Trinity.
So All right, quite any other questions? Comments?
Starkey
Comments? No.
Moore
Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much,
Starkey
Delaney. Great job. Thank you. Thank you
Delaney Morrison
for having us today.
Moore
All right everybody. So can you hold that dog up? Well Jojo? Yeah? Yeah. Good yeah. There's Jo there's JoJo.

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