Some of you might recall my first run at getting karting on ice going in late 2019/2020. Didn’t quite get it going in time before the ice melted. Learned a lot and trying again this season…
This time in a parking lot at a cinema. Going with roval for now for simplicity and long slides.
Here’s the plan I’m filing to the city this week…
Track is 30ft wide and about 900ft long. Too short for competition karts really, but bigger than a lot of rental indoor track.
Intention is to have it run as an arrive and drive kart center, with studded tires. Open Thurs-Sun.
Other days for shooting content\shenanigans if we have time, I have some silly ideas for that.
Hmm… how do I convince my girlfriend the 18hr drive from Charlotte is worth it? Maybe I’ll drop her off in Chicago since she has never been to explore.
Planning permission denied for the Emagine Cinema Parking lot in White Bear Lake, MN.
The board were super helpful, but ultimately the ordinances in place make this nearly impossible to happen in time… potentially ever, but that’s something we could work through.
It’s been over a year now searching for a workable location. Everybody is like “OMG great idea, I’d even love to do this. But nah”
Onwards! The people shall not be denied their right to slide!
Noise is about the only thing we didn’t violate LOL. There’s a bunch of ordinances at play which cause an issue with gokarting, even down to number of available parking spaces if we’re using x amount of the lot etc etc. We can’t even do it as an event.
It’s possible we could do something there for Feb via a special board meeting and a deeper look into various ordinances, but that leaves us with a short season…
Honestly, the board were good about it, it’s just that a lot of changes would need to be approved and made.
The biggest challenge I’m facing now is time. We were good to go in October until we lost our deal with the MN state fairgrounds and that put us on the back foot big time. The great thing about fairgrounds is that they get to call the shots on planning, permits etc. They have full reign…
It’s pretty frustrating to be looking at Jan '21 and being the exact same situation as Jan '20. Lots of interest, no location.
What I’m finding gokarting is not a permitted activity on their grounds per city zones/ordinances. So much to the point that getting a temporary or single event permit can’t happen because it’s just too far out of the rules. It’s possible we could get something going at Emagine (A cinema in white bear, not far from Kline) around Feb but I think realistically between build time we’d be lucky to be open for two weeks, it’d probably be a fairly heafty loss.
I’m really trying to have something in one location that can operate as a kart track for winter so that it’s a little simpler and efficient to operate… Having said that…
I’m back to looking at lakes in parallel with land. Getting a permit for anything more than an odd weekend is hard and there’s a lot of hoops to go through for the weekend stuff. COVID seemingly has made it harder because the DNR is now enforcing rules on the lakes for gatherings. Our setup meets those requirements
Even though snowmobiles and all kinds of stuff tear around the lakes, there’s a some sort of psychological block with gokarts… and operating a business to the public is another level of confusion I guess too.
In general a lot what I’m dealing with it is fear of the unknown.
I’m not even close to quitting, I’m just embarrassed that we haven’t been able to open with something that sounds so simple. Gokarts on ice in one of the coldest inhabited places on the planet
Even the more rural ones are still in cities or county’s of some sort with zoning restrictions etc, if that makes any sense. The term city seems to be used pretty loosely, these are all in suburbs or much further out from what I think you or I would call a city
Abandoned parking lots? farm land? I dont have many ideas, sorry. Any open land nearby owned by the city? You could try buying a plot big enough for it in the middle of nowhere. About $7k for an acre.
