Quote:
Originally Posted by Falcadore
Track is owned by the Queensland Government and Tetley has a long term lease on the place.
JT has been putting some money, and quite a bit of it into Lakeside Park to get it into a workable condition, racetrack actually for the bottom end of town rather than the top end, although he's getting as many volunteers to help with the rehabilitation as possible there has still been a substantial investment. Like QR, Lakeside is leased by Queensland Raceways, in this instance from the Moreton Bay Regional Council. They've had some investment in Lakeside from Queensland Motorways. They've built a huge gantry over the front straight festooned with cameras and sensors, testing QMs technology for free-flow toll roads and also for speed camera monitoring similar to New South Wales where cameras take photos at strategic points along the major routes to see if you've travelled faster than 100/110 kph over long distances and checking your number plate for where to send the ticket.
Queensland Raceways may own significant portions of infrastructure at both venues, but not the venues themselves.
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But what is the business model that would see a permanent race circuit start from scratch? Invest a lazy $100m in a place, build the infrastructure, make it busy 360 days a year, run every single drop out of it...
And the payoff for the investor is in 25 years from commencement, close the circuit, sell the land off as housing/industrial development, and at that point, realise the profit from owning the venture
What companies in this day and age have a 25 year time horizon for any investment?
If you think about it, the demise of Amaroo Park and of Oran Park ended up with similar outcomes, even if they commenced with different intentions...