National Velodrome and Bart Blatstein

National Velodrome and Bart Blatstein.mp3

A long RDA meeting on Monday


A lot of important but routine business had to be discussed and moved forward.
The RDA had some business concerning the income the RDA receives from renting the properties that it is holding for redevelopment. The 2009 Audit was discussed. And everyone is relived that the RDA is no longer encumbered by the Mosaic Development Partners fiasco.


I believe the most important things were what Robert Grabus of the Chester County Economic Development Council had to say. The CCEDC has been charged with reviewing the proposals that were submitted by those interested in developing RDA property. There is a specific format for those proposals. The only proposal so far has been submitted is the “National Velodrome” project.


Below is an excerpt of Mr. Grabus’ remarks:
“This project will give Coatesville a place name in the world. It will become this countries national center for training our Olympic bicyclists. The gentleman in front of that, David Chauner, whom you all have met-two time Olympian. He runs the Pro Cycling Tour in Philadelphia. So I think it will accomplish sort of a marketing, a degree of marketing, positive marketing. It’s definitely a good project. Some of the questions that were raised… they’re looking at a 5 Million dollar grant from the State which actually requires us to move so that they have some kind of land control relatively quickly. They need to have that done prior to the November 2nd Election. Which means the next time this board meets we are going to have to have recommendations here for the board to at least give them some kind of land control. They need that to get the RCAP. And that’s 5 million dollars on a 20 million dollar project. That’s a lot of equity.
It’s an interesting project. You know you’ve had some competition for this recently. Caln Township is very interested in this project; the unanimous vote by their council to move forward with it. Some legal issues are preventing that movement. I’m not at liberty to discuss that. But that is not on the part of the developer. It’s the way the land was acquired that they were going to transfer.
So that was an interesting project. Personally I think the “Flats” site is better site from a logistics standpoint than Caln Township’s site. There were other things that Caln Township brought to the plan, not the least of which was the one hundred percent unanimous approval by the Council to move forward. And they were ready to form committees to get it done.
So we will have to have a recommendation on the finances to you by the next meeting…“
There was some discussion concerning having special meetings in order to make the November 2nd deadline for the grant.
Mr. Grabus, “They don’t need 120 days or 6 months… for due diligence. They need a 90 day agreement that says, we have control over the property subject to X."


And one more very big thing, BART BLATSTEIN IS BACK!


Mr. Grabus, “I’ve already started to reach out to other developers. I have a meeting Thursday morning with a gentleman and that’s Bart Blatstein…. If nothing else we could have a work session with Bart to just bounce questions off, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? Here’s a guy that’s taken massive chunks of property that was crime ridden and very uninviting and turned it around in a short period of time. So he’s the type of person that we want to bring for a pricing policy and he’s got the money to do it…money talks and money walks.


Read the feasibility study for cycling center that was requested by Coatesville City Manager Jean Krack for the City of Coatesville in 2005:
Coatesville hires Velodrome Management Group to complete feasibility study for cycling center


The Valley Preferred Cycling Center – Bob Rodale’s Dream Inspires Countless Champions For More Than Three Decades!


The National Cycling Centre Manchester, UK is an indoor Velodrome track.