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New York Times Story: Getting a Piece of Lime Rock
MEMBERS' DAY Lime Rock Club drivers on their park's track
Lakeville, CT - (24 October 07) Lime Rock Park, the road-racing circuit in northwestern Connecticut, would not pass for most people's idea of a country club. There are no fairways or greens (unless you count the grassy hillsides where spectators spread their blankets), and the only place you could even think about swimming is the small creek that runs along the main straightaway, although not many have been known to do so.
But the park's owner, Skip Barber, has started turning it into the automotive equivalent of a private club, selling $100,000 memberships that allow buyers 20 days' access to the track annually for 50 years. On each of those days, members will be able to test their skills by lapping the track as fast as they can in any high-performance car they take to Lime Rock.
Mr. Barber's goal is to keep Lime Rock from becoming a country club of the more traditional sort. "The thinking behind this is the preservation of Lime Rock as a race track," Mr. Barber said last month. "The problem is that the land is getting too valuable. I've had a standing offer for seven years to turn it into a country club."
The track is located amid the foothills of the Berkshires, in Litchfield County. With so many of the rich and famous having weekend homes in the area, the property would be a logical choice for a golf course surrounded by more homes.
So Mr. Barber hopes that by signing up to 300 members for the Club at Lime Rock Park, as the new program is known, any potential buyer who might think about ending the property's use as a race track would be discouraged by the expense in buying out the club members.
"I look at this as these members are going to make it possible that everybody has a race track," he said.
"We're going to take the money and upgrade the track," Mr. Barber added. A new clubhouse is planned along the front stretch. Other improvements, scheduled for next year and 2009, include renovated restrooms, a children's play area and repaving and reshaping the race track, which is now 1.53 miles long.
As more members join, he said, they will be surveyed to see if they want nonracing amenities like tennis courts. The memberships can be passed down to family members and resold.
The program was announced on July 7, and 57 members had signed on through mid-September. (Besides the $100,000 fee, there are annual dues of $5,000, and a one-time state tax of $10,000, Mr. Barber said.)
So far, he added, most members are men. "We have three or four female members," he said. As for the car of choice, "I would say most people own Porsches."
One attraction for buyers is the access to prime track time.
"There are no new days available," Mr. Barber said. "They're all taken." That includes every day from early spring through (if the weather cooperates) Thanksgiving. There are major professional races, a race-driving school that bear's Mr. Barber's name (but is no longer owned by him) and outings by car clubs that cater to owners of Porsches, Ferraris and other high-performance cars. A local ordinance prevents racing activities on Sundays.
So the various groups that now rent the track are being asked to give back some dates - enough to create a pool of 60 days, from which members can choose their 20 annual track days.
"There's a big spread of experience," Mr. Barber said when asked about the driving prowess of those who have joined. Members will have access to driver training, but no one will have to worry about sharing the track with someone faster or slower. "We're going to have to break it up so that people of similar abilities are in the same group," he said.
Many established road-racing tracks in North America offer member programs like Lime Rock's. Virginia International Raceway, near Danville, Va., with its Motorsport Country Club, and Miller Motorsports Park, near Salt Lake City, are examples. At Miller, a yearly membership for 16 track days is $4,400 for a new member.
Then there are operations like the Drive and Race Club, a private track scheduled to open next year in the Catskills, 85 miles from New York City. The initiation fee is $100,000, and dues are $7,500 a year for unlimited track access.
Lime Rock Park opened in 1957, when a local resident named James Vaill turned his family's gravel pit into a 325-acre sports-car racing circuit. A couple of people who have signed up cited the need to continue that history as their main reason for joining.
"It's a regional icon for sports-car racing, if not a national or international one," said Rob Dyson, 61, of Millbrook, N.Y., who owns a professional sports-car racing team.
Matt Meehan, 50, from Redding, Conn., said, "What this whole thing is about is keeping this special place alive." The race cars he owns, including a 1955 Mercedes-Benz with a Cadillac-Offenhauser engine, are more suited to setting speed records on tracks like the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, where drivers go as fast as they can in a straight line.
Mr. Meehan, noting that there's a church across the street from Lime Rock, said that the exploits on the track have imbued it with its own gasoline-scented sanctity: "There's a kind of living spirit amongst those hills."
Contact:
Deb Daigle
The Club at Lime Rock Park
ddaigle@limerockclub.com
(603) 644-3200 x 12
or
Scott Tranchemontagne
The Club at Lime Rock Park
scott@limerockclub.com
(603) 540-4380
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