National Velodrome Center at Coatesville City Council Meeting Part One

The National Velodrome Center LLP gave a presentation to the Coatesville City Council last night:

Mr. Louis J. Colagreco, Jr. Council for the National Velodrome Center, “We’re here tonight with a number of representatives to give a brief presentation to Council to talk about what we think is a very exciting concept for the ‘Flats’ and I’ll introduce some of these gentlemen right now…

Crosby Wood, Crosby is a local resident of Chester County he has done work in the City of Coatesville. He is vested in the City these past few years. He is the principle of Wilson and Wood L.L.C.  Wilson and Wood L.L.C. is a private equity firm and obviously Crosby group would be looked upon to bring private capital to this very exciting project.

Dave Chauner, who’s sitting next to Crosby; Dave is President of Velodrome Management Group and Dave will be working in conjunction with Crosby to bring this to reality. Dave has a long history in bicycling and I would embarrass him if I went through his credentials. But I will tell you that he is a two time member of the U.S. Olympic Team. And perhaps more importantly to this group is, that Dave has actually run a velodrome, the only other one in the State of Pennsylvania up in the Lehigh Valley. A very successful operation, to help your velodrome, the one proposed for the ‘Flats’ as an indoor operation.

Dave is also a Chester County resident operates his business out of West Chester. He’s been involved in cycling for the past thirty years and he brings the day to day management knowhow to the team, to the operation.

At the end of the isle hiding behind this big pillar right here is Bob Grabus and Gary Smith of Chester County Economic Development Council. The Redevelopment Authority, the City Redevelopment Authority has been working through the Economic Development Council to try and help them sort through the many proposals that you folks have seen over the past few years for development on the “Flats”.  And the Economic Development Council is involved in this project and has been working with Crosby and Dave for a couple of months now investigating this property.

Before we start the presentation, which I’m sure members of the audience, If you’re like myself, I confess, I did not know what a velodrome was. But I’ve been educated. It’s an indoor bicycling venue. It can be used for many other things as Dave and Crosby will explain to you when they do their presentation.

The legal reason we’re here, before we get into the presentation, is because we have been before your Redevelopment Authority.  And your Redevelopment Authority just last week has O.Kd  a ‘Purchase Option Agreement’ which we can talk about later if you want to get into legal talk and explain what the purpose of that agreement is. 

Suffice it to say that this project can’t be done with all private equity. There’s no arena like this anywhere that could be built with all private equity. Crosby, Dave, the Redevelopment Authority and Chester County Economic Development Council are all going to be working and have been working to secure public funds. Not obviously from the City but from other sources that make funding for things like this available.  So it’s a combined public/private partnership.

We think it’s tremendously exciting for the future redevelopment of Coatesville. It’s new and a lot of municipalities have expressed interest in having a draw like this brought to the municipality. This situation in Coatesville may have the Sun and the Stars and the Moon all lined up in the right places, we hope, for this to go forward. And actually help further redevelopment in the City.

That’s where I stop. I’m going to turn it over now to Crosby. Crosby you can pick it up and run with this however you’d like. We have a slide show and a little film presentation."

Crosby Wood, “Good evening, my name is Crosby Wood with Wilson, Wood LLC and my partner David Chauner we are excited to be presenting this exciting opportunity to the City of Coatesville. I have another company called New Age Property that has been buying real estate in the City for a few years now. It’s my mission, personal mission, to revitalize the City in conjunction with other efforts going on. And I believe firmly that the property requires a special and unique project that not only will help to stimulate the local economy but will also reach out to the community. I’ve been kind of racking my brain and wondering, well obviously I’m bias to the Velodrome since it’s our own project.  But in trying to think of other projects that could go in there that could really reach out to the community, help to the get young kids off the street, to help give them some hope possibly for a better future in Coatesville. And honestly, I haven’t been able to come up with a whole lot of ideas.

And so, I am emphatically supporting this project, my company has several Million dollars committed to making sure that this project comes to the City and you also have my commitment as a citizen of Chester County to bring this here.

I think it’s no secret that we’ve been looking at Chester County as a whole bring this to Chester County; but there’s really no other city that could benefit, no other town in this County that could benefit from this project more than Coatesville.  At the end of the day whether you agree with me or not, I believe that Coatesville needs this, needs this facility. You’re going to hear Dave in a second talk about a lot of the projects that he’s done in the past, specifically he’s done the ‘Philadelphia Pro Tour” which has been established in 1985. You’re familiar with the infamous ‘Manayunk Wall’ well, he named it, and maybe it was his wife that probably named it. Anyway, Dave’s been carrying some twenty seven years bringing that race to Philadelphia. It’s literally transformed Manayunk. If you can remember Manayunk in the early seventies, it was a distressed area.

I was fortunate enough to be riding around in a mini convertible this past race and I actually never spent time in Manayunk during the race and it was just, it was just unbelievable. I can’t explain the energy, the craziness that was going on in Manayunk. Not that we’re going to bring that kind of craziness to Coatesville but the draw, the energy that Dave has in his vision for cycling is just tremendous.

My investment is definitely real estate based; focusing on the Velodrome but it’s just as much an investment in a visionary. And the Velodrome is a first step in honestly redefining cycling in the United States. We intend to make cycling, this, to be an attraction locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.  Coatesville will be just like, if you are familiar with Manchester, England’s history in the cycling world; a “Mecca” for track racing because it’s got the best run velodrome in the world. We just visited there a few weeks ago and I have a three minute… film and you guys are going to be able to really see what’s happening and capsulate the energy that’s going on.

Dave Chauner is going to say a few words. We’re going to jump into the three minute video and we are going to do a little bit of a slide presentation and then we’re happy to field some questions and kind of run with it from there. “