US GP in Austin Discussion and Speculation...

I take it you didn't follow the unraveling of the USF1 story?

As Vizsla said: fool me once shame on me, fool me twice...

 

If 7 or 8 months (it's actually more like 11 months) is how long it takes to just starting to move some earth around with a few earth movers, how do you figure they are going to accomplish everything else (see pictures for comparison to Yas or Korea) in the next 10-12 months?

They are in the single-digit percentages of completion, right? It's not like they are 25% done or anything. So let's be very generous and say they are 5% done. If 5% took 7 months, how do you figure they will do the other 95% in perhaps double that time?

What nobody who feels this project is viable has addressed is the massive amount of work that still needs done, and why that work wouldn't be getting done right now, if this was a fully funded project?

Surely nobody believes that what they are doing now is "on track, no problems, nothing to see here, work progressing exactly as planned", do they?

 

What were the total ticket sales and expenses associated with this concert?

 

I would think a lot of that time, would be getting the paperwork in place, to start working......i don't know, out of my scope of knowledge.

i don't speak developer, but maybe someone can make sense of this:

https://www.ci.austin.tx.us/devreview/b_showpublicpermitfolderdetails.jsp?FolderRSN=10550209

seems they only started actually construction quite recently??

No, I didn't.

 

Hate to mention this, but there is no cause and effect relationship between USF1 and Austin. This is like watching a kid blowing bubbles and seeing them pop. Then watching another kid blow up a ballon and expecting it to pop because the bubbles did.

 

Luv it!!

 

HA!

It's a continuum, not a bifurcation my dear fellow

BTW, I loved the twist on the goose idiom. I hadn't heard that one before-you made me look it up

Cheers.

 

If both kids were doing this in a room full of cacti, the analogy would be perfect

 

I like the imagery but I mentioned USF1 only in the context of why someone once burnt would be twice shy.

 

Actually there is: to stay with your metaphor the kids have the same mother who is on a budget. She didn't want to spend her money on frivolous bubbles for the first kid and after seeing that blowing bubbles didn't really do anything of value she decided not to buy more bubble soap for her second boy.

The projects go for nearly identical markets, investors, timeframes and amounts.

The only difference being that hopefully Tavo is not the idiot Windsor was.

 

Correct me if I am wrong Ti12, but I disagree. The market is different. USF1's market was competing F1 teams led by highly funded and established companies whereas Austin's market is the fans on the mid and southern North American continent. They have no competition for F1 races in this market. Also, USF1 had to compete for top talent in the car design and engineering fields, while Austing has only to maintain their facility once built. Austin has also been able to hire firms in an economic downturn when companies are competing for work. As far as I know, the investors are totally different people, with Austin having the advantage of one deep pockets investor in particular, something USF1 didn't have (correct me if I'm wrong here). Austin also has the state behind it with $$.

The timeframes and amounts fit together. USF1 had to make a similar initial investment as Austin, but they had to keep raising these amounts over and over, to keep up with the ever changing technology in the cars. Austin has to build a facility one time and then maintain it with major upgrades only occurring occasionally at widely separated time frames. Your arguement that the kids have the same mother comes from your imagination, unless you are referring to the huge pool of investors in the USA, for which this country is well known.

Carrying this a little farther, USF1 created their initial interest by proposing an All-American team and then kept making compromises with Non-American this and Non-American that, which had to dilute the support. Austin has expanded it attractiveness by broadening its functionality to attract more users and more revenue, thus making it a more attractive investment.

 

USF1 was unsustainable from the get go.
As for deep pockets. No sign of them being opened very far as of yet.
If they were going to be opened I think it would of happened by now. Tavo wouldn't be looking at alternate revenue streams if he had access to the needed monies.

 

Chad Hurley (US F1's investor) had significantly deeper pockets that Red does.

Both projects rely on economic viability. The simple fact is that people don't care about F1 in the USA. This was probably less of an issue for USF1, because most of the races happen outside the USA, so their market for sponsors, drivers and such was much larger than Austin's market for F1 fans is. US F1 also could count on a certain amount of TV money from Bernie, so they just had to find some funding and build a car (there wasn't even a 107% rule at the time - so the car could be a pig and still run each race). Austin doesn't have any guaranteed income - the opposite, actually. They need to pay Bernie whether they have a race or not, whether they turn a profit or not. And they don't get to keep any TV money, any concessions money, any trackside advertising money, or any VIP paddock attendee money. Their sole revenue in terms of F1 viability is from F1 ticket sales. In a country that has proven time and again it is not interested in F1, and where one of the biggest fiascos happened (at Indy) to turn off what little interest there was for good.

If anything, Austin will have a harder time of it than US F1 did. All the other stuff is great (biking trails, concerts, etc). But if there was a viable business plan to build a location for all of that, it would have happened on it's own. All of that is fluff to the main theme - which is an F1 race.

 

According to published reports Bahrain's sanction fee was 30 mil. If Austin has to pony up the same amount it would be more than they've verifiably raised so far.

 

Try building above Barton Springs and see how far you get...

They still hate Freeport MacMoRan in Austin, for that......(west side Mall, I forget the name)..They went on down to the Phillipines, and blow up islands there now....

SRT MIke I WAS wrong, they are going to get a substation....but the Power Company will foot the $$ for that.

 

Most likely an Agricultural Tax exemption, until they platted it for a Poor Folks Subdivision....it's scrub cactus cow pasture, draining down to the Colorado River.

Look at Tahitian Village in Bastrop for some hugher $$$ comps.....that's a Golf Course community just to the east.

 

AMD is a Ferrari F1 sponsor.....

Maybe you've heard of them....

 

Yearning For Zion Ranch is a little further west, where they breed the 14 year old girls....

 

That's an interesting find....*print*

Most large works are divided into phase and proceed concurrently on devopment time lines.

You can do a lot of dirt prep work on the proper EPA clearances, then you pull another "Foundation Only" for the subgrade concrete, often I'll hang a "miscellaneous Electrical" onto that Project number the get the undergorund conduit ducts in..

THEN the final phase is the actual Building Permit as the construction comes above ground, standing on all the previous work installed.

 

FYI - incorrect figures regarding net worth.
red mccombs is worth about $1b more than Chad Hurley. Hurley's worth (based on the YouTube sale) is estimated at $335M (Forbes); mccombs $1.3B.....

 

This is something that I have thought is a very interesting thing actually. Computers are going to play an increasingly popular role in F1 (Sims, modeling) A lot of Ausin companies would benefit from exposure on this project.

 

http://www.edmmagazine.com/articles/study-finds-insomniacs-electric-daisy-carnival-2010-generated-almost-42-million-two-days-lo
The report, commissioned by Insomniac, found that the two-day event boosted output in Los Angeles County by $41,955,237 in total. EDC 2010 generated a demand for the equivalent of 354 full-time jobs, bringing in $14.6 million in income for workers in the region. EDC generated $3.1 million in tax revenues: local governments earned over $1.2 million in revenues, and $1.9 million went into the state budget. The report also found that Insomniac contributed a significant amount of expenditures to the local economy. Attendees generated significant demand for hotel rooms, occupying 15,665 hotel rooms on the first night of EDC, and 18,429 on the second night.

It's expected this even will be even bigger in Las Vegas.

 

None of those numbers are the ticket sales or the expenses - they are PR fluff about local economic benefit.

 

My mistake. But still means USF1 had a big money guy behind them as well.

As for Red, he won't have $400mm liquid, and I doubt he would dump 1/3rd of his entire net worth into a single project. He doesn't need to.

Austin GP is definitely underfunded at the moment and having trouble raising capital.

 

*high five*

He's sold a LOT of cars.......