Three different groups vie for Laguna Seca contract

The coming year will see a changing of the guard at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, even if the track’s founder, the Sports Car Racing Association of the Monterey Peninsula (SCRAMP), manages to hold onto power.

That’s because nonprofit SCRAMP would be in a partnership with Florida-based racing giant International Speedway Corporation. The two jointly responded to Monterey County’s request for proposals for track management with a 25-year concessionaire bid.

Last spring, after SCRAMP experienced continued financial difficulties, questionable management and millions in deferred maintenance, the County Board of Supervisors opened up the the racetrack to competitive bidding.

Two other groups, with different financial approaches, also pitched the county with management proposals before the July 1 deadline. The Salinas-based nonprofit Friends of Laguna Seca says it wants to leverage wealthy community stakeholders to keep management of the raceway local.

The other, World Automotive Championship of California, is a Long Beach-based group led by Christopher Pook, who’s been in the international racing business for 40-plus years and boasts having turned circuits even more financially stressed than Laguna Seca into money-making operations.

The three vying parties take three different financial approaches to Laguna Seca: nonprofit, for-profit and a hybrid of the two.

SCRAMP representatives declined to comment on their bid and proposed partnership with ISC, which earned $665 million in revenue last year, citing confidentiality in the bidding process.

In a prepared statement announcing the partnership released in May, the recent allies contend the national scale and financial expertise of ISC combined with the local knowledge of SCRAMP would create a “unique synergy.”

While the partnership remains silent on the details of their proposal, Friends of Laguna Seca and WACC are openly at odds about what type of concessionaire will be successful at Laguna Seca.

Lauri Eberhart, general manager of Friends, believes the limited sources of revenue at Laguna Seca will work against a for-profit operation.

“The for-profit model just doesn’t make sense,” says Eberhart, a lawyer who has managed raceways for more than 20 years. “With restrictions on traffic, noise and available dates you’re not going to make the kind of returns investors want.”

Pook, on the other hand, acknowledges the limitations for growth and development at the nearly 60-year-old facility, but contends the track must be run as a business. “We are profit-driven,” Pook says. “They’re trying to continue a failed business model.”

While Friends of Laguna Seca highlights support from local heavyweights like business leaders Bruce Taylor and Don Chapin, they group does not currently have the $10 million needed to finance their takeover and invest in immediate improvements, but Eberhart says they will be able to reach that goal.

WACC, on the other hand, claims to have $20 million in startup money from an investment bank.

That figure makes even ardent Friends supporters concerned that kind of money will make their upstart local nonprofit irrelevant. Tom Minnich, a Friends board member, puts it bluntly.

“If [Pook] actually has $20 million in private equity he will win the bid,” Minnich says. “And I would support them.”