new race track in Texas

http://www.brenhambanner.com/news/proposed-racetrack-meets-stiff-opposition-in-public-hearing/article_a0ab19b9-ab14-534a-ab8b-353271cb1a41.html

I found this little article on the Banner Press website. Doesn't sound like it's wanted, but that's par for the course with these things I'm sure. However, Brenham is still a small town and any outsiders are looked down upon. I know this from personal experience.

I have a friend that lives in Brenham and by chance works for the Banner Press. I'll have to ask him if he knows anymore.

 

First I've heard of it but I was interested because my grandfather used to have a ranch in Dime Box a few miles away from Brenham.

So I did a quick search and found these links on first page of google:

STANDING ROOM ONLY CROWD OBJECTS TO PROPOSED TRACK | KWHI.com

Looks like they still have to clear zoning changes based on the above.

The guy listed in the article above as the developer is apparently a P Club guy: RennPoints Driver History of Charles Von Schmidt

This Google Map point is not necessarily the proposed site, but rather just the road named in the above article. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Wonder+Hill+Rd,+Brenham,+TX+77833/@30.141076,-96.349266,14z

 

I read the comments and realized that they could have gone a long way by showing pictures of HHR, ECR, MSRC and MSRH as examples of how low impact, visually and environmentally, these tracks are on the surrounding environment.

The lady who was talking about the bees and how they will lose many hundreds of acres of wildflowers doesn't realize that they are only going to lose about 50 acres under pavement and the rest will likely be natural pasture.

They would likely get 2 or 3 hotel nights per year out of me, in Brenham, and a couple hundred dollars in fuel sales from me, and a couple hundred spent on food locally, if they succeed.

I'm glad there is someone trying to fill the eventual gap that TWS will leave when it is plowed under.

 

I am going to paraphrase my post above and send an email to the Brenham Economic Development Foundation:

Brenham, Texas

I encourage you to do the same if you support the project.

 

I sent them this... (I shot low on the dollars, we are endurance racers so our team food and fuel costs are easily $1000 per weekend)

 

I'm only 45mins from Brenham and would welcome another local track.

 

Same here. Would be a great Houston get together. We could rent the track and have a club day! DFW does it a lot.

 

The developer, Club Track Holdings LLC has encountered a small issue that Mr. Von Schmidt did not know about when planning Bluebonnet Circuit. A simple call to 811 would have been beneficial as there are high pressure gaslines crisscrossing the property. I also don't think that this entire deal has been conducted ethically or honestly. There was collusion between members of the County Commissioners and the EDF to sneak this racetrack into our community. Mr. Von Schmidt has made statements that 20-40 of the club cars would only contribute noise levels comparable to a Kubota tractor. We all know that is a bunch of baloney. We are a farming community - there are hundreds of people impacted by this proposed race track - we don't want it because it doesn't fit here - we are all land owners that have a vested interest in preserving the country lifestyle. We all know Brenham is growing but this isn't the way to grow it - with a private club track that actually benefits no one except for the car club that have no reason to respect our community or our way of life. The economical impact is grossly overstated - TWS wouldn't have fallen victim to bankruptcy if it contributed the money to the community as Mr. Von Schmidt alludes to in his commentary. I suggest moving this monstrosity to your backyard - you all seem to embrace it - maybe you should volunteer your town to take it on.

 

Actually, I have a home on the adjacent residential development to MotorSport Ranch in Cresson, TX, so this track is in my back yard. I am pretty confident that the track has had a positive impact, from tax revenues paid by the track, tax revenues paid by me and my neighbors, and the business revenues paid by me and members to local businesses. The track makes a point of being quiet in the evenings and early mornings and I don't know of any negative feelings by the residents of Cresson directed to the track and its members.

I don't see why a rural and farming lifestyle and motorsports enthusiasm are mutually exclusive and you will likely find that many of the country's race tracks are in rural areas and coexist well with the prior residents, such as Road America, Road Atlanta, Thunderhill and many others.

 

If you look at a Google Earth map of CRESSON TX, you will see the race track and you will see Cresson TX consists of about 2 traffic lights and a population of 856 as of 2009. There is absolutely NOTHING around the area and I can see why the "town" would welcome the revenue. Brenham is not Cresson. Wonderhill is not Cresson. The track will be in the middle of all of our properties - right next to the Brenham State School and residential neighborhoods. Nice try on an angle to present this as "good for us". It's not - and if I dig into the other places you mentioned, I am sure I could find similar "Cressons". This abomination won't be forced on us. We are fighting it and have already won the tax abatement request that was quietly introduced for vote until we caught wind of it. We have hundreds of people in Wonder Hill - equal to or more than the population of Cresson that don't want this here.

Road America - Elkhart Lake WI - the racetrack is by the Airport. Appropriate.

Road Atlanta - actual in Braselton Ga - this track is pretty much the same story - backs up to a trailer park - in an already commercially zoned area.

And Thunder Hill - in the middle of the desert with ABSOLUTELY NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING around it.
5250 California 162, Willows, CA 95988

 

Thank you for joining us for a conversation, Wonder Hill.

TWS is at risk of closing because the property value has increased dramatically as College Station had grown, and the property is now worth a lot more to a real estate developer as raw land to build more McMansions and big box retail stores.

So you see, our community (car enthusiast community) is also losing something we love very much, a piece of property that is near and dear to our hearts, because the times are changing and communities in Texas are growing.

You might reach out to the communities of Angleton, Decatur, and Cresson and ask their longtime residents if they even notice the facilities there. Don't take our word for it.

 

Also, Blue Bell Ice Cream is Delicious. Your community is enriched (and I don't mean monetarily) by the good feelings and fond memories that Blue Bell invokes.

A racetrack like the ones built in the communities if Angleton, rural Decatur, and Cresson require far fewer changes to the beautiful natural topography of the communities they exist in. Much less bulldozing of farmland to build huge buildings than the Blue Bell factory has constructed over the years.

Car enthusiasts, as a group, hold a significant quantity of reverance and fondness in our hearts for the tracks we hold dear. All of the tracks you named are places that I want to visit and would spend time, energy, and money to do so. We look at racetracks the same way baseball fans love ballparks. Except, instead of paying to watch Multi-Millionaire man-children play a game, we go to these revered tracks to enjoy our very own Field of Dreams.

 

Another note about TWS... that track facility is very, very different than what is being proposed in your community. TWS was built to attract thousands of fans. It is absolutely an eyesore when viewed from surrounding roads.

The tracks built in the communities of Angleton and Decatur and Cresson are very different from TWS in College Station. None of them have buildings over two stories tall, and very little of the tracks or their buildings can be seen from the road. They are actually difficult to find unless you know exactly where the entrance gate is! There are very few provisions for spectators. Never any bleachers or stands. Just a grassy knoll for family members to spread a blanket out, or a balcony on the second story of the office, maybe.

TWS is an eyesore. And it is nothing like what is being proposed in your beautiful community.

 

I'm sorry Farmer Dave but your facts are a bit skewed. The plan for Club Track Holdings IS to build big buildings on the property. Which begs the question, have you seen the plans for Bluebonnet Circuit? We have and that is one of the reasons why we don't want it here. We would rather a subdivision go in where we would actually have neighbors that would be members of the community rather than weekend yahoos living out their Parnelli Jones fantasies at the expense of our peace.

See - this is what you guys/gals don't get - this is YOUR hobby - this is your CHOICE. You can enjoy your HOBBY, but not at the expense of my quality of life. Your HOBBY is intruding on our quality of life - which before this track proposal did not include 20-40 cars racing a mile away from my ranch. We don't have a CHOICE other than to fight it. Club Tracking Holdings, Mr. Von Schmidt tried to do this deal sneaky, low and dirty and we caught him. Think about it - if you were going to build a huge race track within a community, wouldn't you want to maybe, I don't know, see how people feel about it?

And please, stop with the "race track is good for the environment" story - unless you can provide statistical evidence or an environmental study that supports any of these claims. Pollution of all kinds will be the result - visual, environment, and noise.
To quote one of my neighbors and engineer:
I put a model together in Excel based on ISO 9613-2 (the international standard that the software packages are based on) and I think I will have ~40dB at 2.8 miles away. That is only based on 10 cars at 105dB, 15 cards at 95dB, and 10 cars at 85dB. 35 cars at 105dB would be an outrageous amount of noise. That is above rural ambient of ~35dB, so we will hear it well.

 

If rural ambient is 35db, then 40db would be less than the sound of a tractor. Much less. Most tracks have a 95dB limit in areas where there are any residential areas surrounding the track, so you may want to rerun the simulation with a 95dB max. Also, keep in mind that iso 9613-2 only takes into account atmospheric attenuation and does not take into account topography, foliage or structures that serve to also attenuate the sound. So unless the land is perfectly flat with no grass, trees, or buildings, the sound will be much lower.

However, I doubt you will as you seem dead set against it no matter what, so no amount of logic or reason is likely to change your mind. Hopefully, there are other more open minded, reasonable individuals in the community.

 

We are wasting time debating with a close-minded anonymous keyboard warrior who thinks, as one example, that Road America is near an airport. Sheboygan Municipal airport is further from RA than Brenham Muni is from downtown Brenham. And Cresson is obviously an inferior place to Brenham due to its lower population. His prejudice simply oozes from the pejorative terms he uses for the facility and we MotorSport enthusiasts.

He's got his place and you outsiders stay away, ya hear! I bet he don't mind the noise from shotguns and deer rifles in season.

 

"Also, keep in mind that ISO 9613-2 only takes into account atmospheric attenuation and does not take into account topography, foliage or structures that serve to also attenuate the sound."

Statements like the above should really be kept to yourselves. It really makes you look "non-knowledgeable". Sort of like Charles Von Schmidt publicly stating at our community meeting the other night that "noise attenuation is linear" while he had an internet attenuation calculator on the projector showing a log term in the equation for noise propogation. Best laugh I have had in quite some time!

For the poster who posted the above comment regarding ISO 9613-2, you might want to google the standard and refer to equations 10, 11 and Table A1 and equation A.3, which address everything mentioned above. I guess the poster must have gotten confused when they ran into the summation and integral symbols. Calculus is a *****!

 

Well, my time is my own to waste. But you're not helping the MotorSport community by immediately resorting to name calling and immediate dismissal of another person's views becaue they differ from your own.

 

I did not immediately resort to name calling nor did I dismiss the views. Please read my earlier post; I thought I tried to start a reasoned debate. The response to my post was to belittle Cresson compared to Brenham and Wonder Hill, claim Road America is near an airport and that the development is an "abomination" and MotorSport enthusiasts "Parnelli Jones" wannabes, among other things The thread reads to me like a troll joining the site for the sole purpose to denigrate the planned development and I'll bet the newest poster with the ISO moniker is the same person with more denigration to dish out about everyone's ignorance but his own on this noise standard (I have not studied the cited standard but the linear/logarithmic attenuation remark seemed odd since the developer's mistake would actually hurt the developer's position due to less attenuation over distance, so if I was ISO I'd not emphasize the greater logarithmic rate of attenuation). I can't tell who the poster is due to the anonymity of the posts, but stand by my statements upon continued reflection and the tenor of the only posts by this person.

I am happy to debate, but it sure looks to me like Wonder Hill and ISO is (are?) here only to pontificate. I can appreciate the risk of noise, traffic, and other issues but this person wants no change to his environment at all and has no desire to compromise. Since he does not share the interests of a fellow property owner in the area he wants that person to not pursue his interests.

 

Calculus is easy, differential equations are a *****.

Iso 9613-2 provides guidance for foliage attenuation up to 200m, and the overall spec has an upper limit of 1000m (with no attenuation) beyond which they do not even provide an estimated accuracy. Read section 9 "Accuracy and Limitations of the Method." I'd really like to know how you are getting anything remotely accurate at a distance of 2.8 miles, or 4x beyond the upper limit of what it is supposed to be used for. Estimating the db's at that distance using that spec would only have a prayer of being accurate if you had flat land with no topography and no foliage and uniform surface. Good luck with that.

 

We are protecting the land that we bought with our hard earned money. We will defend that just as anyone else would in this country.

Shotguns, rifles, and tractors are all noices that we EXPECT to hear here. It's a way of life. 40 cars dumping throttles, squealing tires through turns, followed by high rpm blasts through the straights is not.

Our only choice is to fight - and to encourage the development somewhere else away from so many homes.

Farmer Dave - thanks for your reply - we are trying to be respectful as well.

This is Texas - we have been known to stand up a time or two to defend what is ours. "Come and take it" ;-)

 

You make a valid argument sir. As a native Houstonian I have spent quite a bit of time during my 50 years in and around the Brenham/Bellville area and the true country small town atmosphere and the people are what makes that area so appealing. Like you I would hate for that to be lost. There is probably more property for sale another 50 miles away from your area. Also it should be noted that Houston already has a club style membership track in MSR thus I now realize that there is no need for another one.

 

What airport are you talking about at Road America? I've been there many times and have never seen one. I'm not arguing with you or your points, by the way, I just want to know what airport you are referring to.