Wrexham New Skatepark & Bike Trial

[Simpson]

Multimillion pound project my arse.

How much does 15 acres of land cost now-a-days? Pluss insurance, plus all the building work that needs doing, plus all the planning permission that you need, etc etc. wont be far off £1,000,000 i would imagine.

[adamtrials]

How much does 15 acres of land cost now-a-days? Pluss insurance, plus all the building work that needs doing, plus all the planning permission that you need, etc etc. wont be far off £1,000,000 i would imagine.

For a large unit in that area I'd say about £2 per square feet per annum, perhaps £1 if you get a really good deal/ somewhere really dilapidated. An acre is just under 50,000 sq feet, you do the maths... That's a hell of a lot of money per year on rent, I'd imagine the business rates would be hideous too.

Edited July 14, 2009 by adamtrials

[Simpson]

3.28 feet in a metre, so 3.28 X 2 = £6.58 per metre square.

£6.58 X 60702.846 = £3,298,210.67 (edit per anum)

I guess thats for warehouse space when most of the place will be open fields but still, a lot of money.

Edited July 15, 2009 by Simpson

[that NBR dude]

Thats without taking public liability insurance into account, plus employers insurance, security costs, the 100+k to build a decent skate park.

Simp's original quote of "multi-million" is fairly realistic.

[monkeyseemonkeydo]

3.28 feet in a metre, so 3.28 X 2 = £6.58 per metre square.

There may be 3.28 feet in a metre but there are 10.7584 square feet per square metre...

[Simpson]

There may be 3.28 feet in a metre but there are 10.7584 square feet per square metre...

But to compare feet^2 to meteres^2, then its only X 3.28??? Too early for me to be thinking lol

[monkeyseemonkeydo]

But to compare feet^2 to meteres^2, then its only X 3.28??? Too early for me to be thinking lol

Now I'm confused! Maybe it's just the way it's written down there- looked like you were making a comparison between feet and metres then jumping to square metres. Whatever, it's a lot of money and a 15 acre site is never going to be feasible without a lot of financial backing...

Edit: 15 acres is 653,400 sq. feet. At £2 per sq. foot that makes it just over £1.3 million per annum.

[adamtrials]

I think £4-500k per year is a more reasonable estimate for rent based on two thirds of it being outdoor, but yeah, still a huge amount, unless some crazily good deal has been negotiated on some semi abandoned place that's been empty for years perhaps (From personal findings undesirable FSBO commercial properties can occasionally be purchased freehold for not much more than a years' rent if you're really look around).

[Matt Vandart]

£600,000 tops and it would be really pucker for that about as good as the tits on the left.

You could get away with alot less than that but to really get people to travel there it would have to be good shit.

Matt

Edited July 15, 2009 by Matt Vandart

[toshack1969]

Update on Park

Land deal has been delayed as the seller has difficulties.

The Park in Wrexham is dependant on this parcel of Land. I am currently looking for alternatives but I do not want to scale down the size of the Park which on Completion will be the largest in Europe wit the scope of it being largest in world in the future.

Wrexham was chosen ot for financial reasons but for the locality to the Management team I will be putting in the Park, I am a businessman and this is a specialist market so I have recruited the best team I can find who Live in Owestry so W. the ony example I can gve frexham was chose. I have contacts with American Skateparks and the plans fom the Skating points of view was to organise UK/USA competitions with a team from the new park being sponsered by my group of companies to take part this meant no cost for travel or accomodation for the team.

I am not willing to give the location away in case of rival bidders but once its secured you will hear about it my marketing team will make sure, the name will be provided by way of a top energy drink and my marketing team are already working on the campaign. As some posts say I am not working on a build it and they will come but on the basis of people through the door because for the venture to survive I need customers. Most of my enquirys at the moment are tentative but once we have the land we will ave a open day to show everyone what is oming. Its a long process and timescales at te moment have not been finalised but once I have the land and permissions the pak will open within 12 months.

Insurances yes as mentioned they are extortionate for this type of business as the liabilities are high.

I for see 2 types of insurance the standard insurance for the park will be covered from the admission prices but if you were to purchase your own which will be on sale at the park the admission to the park would be lowered the only example I can give is I envisage half the price of admission would be for insurance premiums.

Finally like I have said before this is a private venture. the purchase of the land lowers our operating costs as we will not have to pay rents so kep the costs to you the customer down. The reason I joined this forum was to start raising awareness of the park which you discusiions are doing for me thank you

[toshack1969]

Also who pays to ride a skatepark? We have 1 small one round here which is always empty, due to 4-5 local parks which are free. If you think your going to persuade a hard nosed business man to invest then you need to massivly scale down your project, think about profits, break even analysis's, maybe make a USP of it being inside so your almost guarenteed to have riders paying to ride when its raining (which is a lot of the time) and parents paying to know that their kids are safe etc. And you really need to get the location right.

Why are you trying to get 3 totally different riding disciplines in the same place as well? If you come to ride BMX you will ride the skateparks and BMX track, if you come to ride trials you will most likley only ride the trials rig, and DH riders will only ride the downhill... finding 15 acres cheap, in a place where there are a lot of people to come and ride??? your mad.

Sounds 1000X less plausible than my business studies CW where I made half the shit up. (just to clear up my CW was 10+ A4 pages long, with break even analysis, ballance sheets, monthly forecasts to calculate the liquidity of the business, design and planning costings, analysis of opportunity cost....... etc. I re-drafted this about 10 times fully. You have put up 3 poorly spelt / arranged infomation which is very dissapointing for me. Seeing as my CW was only about setting up a tiny sandwhich shop and your planning to design and build a multi million pound project, on no technical basis)

Simpson you took business studies I run businesses for a living.

Your CW was 10 A4 pages long the contract for the land is 10,000 pages long and the legal team has been on it for 6 months now.

To make a business viable takes a lot of planning and a lot of hard work especially when its being done from Scratch. As for a hard nosed business man to invest thats not needed as The funds are already in place and the plans are not far off completion for submission to the counsel. a 15 acre site costs approx £1.6 mil. The building costs for buildings car parks and tracks and trails approx £3m thats an investment before I start of £4.6 million which in any hard nosed businessmans eyes is a risk. If it fails its not due to the lack on investment or ideas.

Transport to the Park has now been rethought we will have a fleet of 4 Buses specially adapted to take bikes on board ye users will have to pay for the service this is a business afterall.

Lack of post is due to lack of progress but pretty soon there will be a website, joining line and marketing campaign.

No technical basis I do beg to differ but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.

Finally I do apologise for all the posts here, I tied to do them as word documents and upload them but it will not work so I would have them to a high standard but to no avail.

I am new to this forum so things will improve as I learn its features

[monkeymoped]

try and contact rampworx in liverpool they'll help out.

i'm in liverpool and would love to to come and ride/help out in any way

[Mark W]

Wrexham was chosen ot for financial reasons but for the locality to the Management team I will be putting in the Park, I am a businessman and this is a specialist market so I have recruited the best team I can find who Live in Owestry so W.

I still have no idea why you'd choose to try and do as ambitious a plan as this in somewhere like Wrexham. I mean, I know it's because of "the locality to the Management team", but for something which is going to rely on a strong local scene and a good surrounding scene, it's a bad idea. There just isn't a big scene in North Wales, and although you might get some riders from the NW of England (Liverpool and up), the scenes there are pretty tight and have pretty much whatever they need - which is why they have a big scene.

Should probably point out that there used to be a skatepark in Wrexham, but there wasn't enough of a scene to sustain it. Bear in mind too that that was an indoor park, which is guaranteed to be usable whatever the weather. You're creating an outdoor setup that is going to be highly dependent on good weather for it to run, which is something you don't get much of in North Wales. Similarly, as an outdoor site, if you're making any kind of trails or jumps out of dirt or mud you're going to need a pretty good team to keep them running - and the experienced/better trail builders are generally more into doing their own thing as that's where the enjoyment comes from). If you look at the best trails spots in the UK, there are generally a core group of riders/diggers who keep them running. They spend most of the year working on the jumps, then the summer riding them. With good dirt jumps/trails, you can't alter them unless the soil/ground is moist or wet as it won't stick, hence the majority of work going in just after it's rained. It just makes it all work better, essentially. Either way - you're going to need good, experienced builders to get things running and keep them running, which is again something I'm not sure you'll have there.

Going back to the indoor park point too - they typically struggle during the summer as the majority of people simply opt to ride street, or simply not want to be stuck in a car/train/bus travelling on a nice day. However, they're very useful during the spring/autumn/winter, which is why the vast majority of skateparks that are privately owned are indoors. I just don't understand how you think it'll be a viable option to be creating an outdoor area like this (Especially bearing in mind the wash-out we had this summer, last summer, the summer in '06, etc.) - it may get some trials riders from the local-ish area in, and maybe some MTBers too, but it's not going to get BMXers interested as there are plenty of other sort of facilities that have bigger/stronger scenes nearby. I'd imagine that as it's not going to be able to include much in the way of changes of elevation (In that Wrexham, although having some hills, isn't quite the same as a mountain range or anything similar) that it's not going to be incredibly interesting for MTBers either.

If you genuinely want to do it, then I'd fully suggest going somewhere else. I'm not a businessman and I haven't done business studies or anything like that, but as a rider - your target area - it doesn't seem like something that could really work...

[Matt Vandart]

Ah, so it is going to be multimillion pound stuff should be seriously good shit then...........

It's either gonna be the best idea in the UK at the moment, or the worst.

I hope it works well for you.

The figures you are quoting are a very heavy investment for a UK site.

With figures these large your teams market research must have found something which we can't see.

Overseas customers?

As percentages how would the site be split between the activities?

I assume you are targeting other forums other than trials forums.

Did you mention Moto X. Is that your biggest customer base?

It all sound really rather exciting.

As I said good luck and I for one shall be watching closely.

Take what Mark says seriously though, dirt jumps take alot of looking after.

Matt

Edited August 8, 2009 by Matt Vandart

[PaRtZ]

I think people are bitter because wrexham isn't near them. Bigmans trials park looks great....but its down south...Ali's quarry would be sick...but its up north so now theres one thats in the middle of the UK and still people arent prepared to travel to it because its not on their doorstep :/ Thats disappointing to be honest...

the however is, Mark had a good point. For street we have a typical TGS wall in Pensarn and for fun street theres Bangor. For natural, we have a day out in Ogwen. If you made something for trials, it'd have to be pretty different. We'd obviously go there anyway just to help you out, but it'd have to be really fun to ride and DEFINITLY NOT JUST SHIT LOADS OF WALLS/PALLETS. that would be an epic waste I have to say

Still looking forward....keep us posted!!

[Mark W]

"Middle of the country" is probably stretching it a bit Geographically, Derby and all that lot are pretty much central, and there's plenty of quarries and stuff to ride around there.

Wrexham's also not great in terms of transport links. There's not really a particularly direct road to it from the E/SE apart from cruising down the A483 (which isn't too bad as it's usually a free-flowing dual carriageway), and trains aren't great - generally requiring a change or two for virtually anywhere that isn't either to the south or north of Wrexham - but still in Wales. Specialist buses aren't really going to be that much of a tempter...

[PaRtZ]

"Middle of the country" is probably stretching it a bit Geographically, Derby and all that lot are pretty much central, and there's plenty of quarries and stuff to ride around there.

Wrexham's also not great in terms of transport links. Specialist buses aren't really going to be that much of a tempter...

Until I googled it Im sure you made that up and hell no buses will never work

But the a483 goes to wrexham from south wales, and the a55 goes to it from the M56/M6 so its pretty fool proof to get to. OK middle of the country's wrong.... but maybe on a vertical only measurement its close

[David]

Personally, I would of thought Birmingham to be a much better option (For obvious reasons such as location, transportation infrastructure). I know there would be downsides such as cost etc but with the inevitability of creation skatepark closing it will leave Birmingham with nothing.

[Mark W]

Until I googled it Im sure you made that up and hell no buses will never work

But the a483 goes to wrexham from south wales, and the a55 goes to it from the M56/M6 so its pretty fool proof to get to. OK middle of the country's wrong.... but maybe on a vertical only measurement its close

Driving up the length of the A483 to Wrexham from South to Mid Wales is f**king balls though, to be fair. I don't think it ever took less than an hour and a half, and that was from 20 miles south of Newtown - which is still reasonably northern.

Can't believe you thought I'd made "tempter" up, haha. Anyway, I edited my post before

Personally, I would of thought Birmingham to be a much better option (For obvious reasons such as location, transportation infrastructure). I know there would be downsides such as cost etc but with the inevitability of creation skatepark closing it will leave Birmingham with nothing.

Purely for making people use a fingerprint scanner to use that place, Creation can f**k right off. Considering it's only 'good' part is a loop of jumpboxes and wallrides, it's not the end of the world. Gonna suck for the locals I guess, but it's one of the most boring skateparks I've been to behind Motion (Who can also get f**ked. I regard it as karma that the owner f**ked his knee taking the 'street' part out to make a foampit).

[David]

Purely for making people use a fingerprint scanner to use that place, Creation can f**k right off. Considering it's only 'good' part is a loop of jumpboxes and wallrides, it's not the end of the world. Gonna suck for the locals I guess, but it's one of the most boring skateparks I've been to behind Motion (Who can also get f**ked. I regard it as karma that the owner f**ked his knee taking the 'street' part out to make a foampit).

Agreed. Although as far as I know they are extending the climbing area into where the park is now so that gets the thumbs up from me

[adamtrials]

To make a business viable takes a lot of planning and a lot of hard work especially when its being done from Scratch. As for a hard nosed business man to invest thats not needed as The funds are already in place and the plans are not far off completion for submission to the counsel. a 15 acre site costs approx £1.6 mil. The building costs for buildings car parks and tracks and trails approx £3m thats an investment before I start of £4.6 million which in any hard nosed businessmans eyes is a risk. If it fails its not due to the lack on investment or ideas.

I've gotta say I'm slightly perplexed by some of the logic and statements in your posts. You seem to be suggesting the key to success is spending a metric f**k load? That last statement really does confuse me, spending too much is quite probably the easiest way to make the business fail. Just poking some figures into the calculator, if every person who came to the park paid £10 every time they came you'd need 460,000 visitors to get 4.6mil back. With a more realistic entry price of £5, 920,000 visitors. Say the park is a phenomenal success and has 200 visitors every day, that'd take 12.5 years just to pay back the initial investment, and that isn't including any operating costs, and any interest on the finance i'm assuming you're using. I'd say an average of 75 visitors a day would be very optimistic, and that'd take 33 years... Sure you're intending to have shops there that'll pay you rent, but it's a drop in the ocean.

This combined with the "10,000 page legal document that's taken six months", I think something doesn't smell right. Please prove your credibility by showing us your past business successes?

Your Facebook profile doesn't seem to add to your credibility either, your profile picture is you topless on webcam, and you have 176 friends, all of whom are busty young blondes/ glamour models from around the world?