Bill Drossos, the president of the South Okanagan Motorsports Corporation that hopes to open the Area 27 racetrack and training facility in Oliver, recently detailed the long history of the project to members of the Osoyoos Rotary Club, including club president Marieze Tarr. (Keith Lacey photo)
If everything continues to go smoothly – and there’s no indication they won’t – the proposed Area 27 motorsports park in Oliver could be open to members as soon as next May.
Bill Drossos, the president of the South Okanagan Motorsports Corporation that is spearheading the construction of Area 27, told members of the Osoyoos Rotary Club last Thursday that negotiations on a long-term lease with the Osoyoos Indian Band (OIB) are in the final stages and he’s confident construction will begin before the end of summer.
“If we can start construction before the end of the summer … by May we could have our first laps on the track,” said Drossos.
Two years ago, Drossos and several of his supporters, including legendary Canadian race car driver Jacques Villeneuve, announced plans to build western Canada’s premier motorsports facility. Villeneuve has signed on to design the racetrack for Area 27.
They agreed to call it Area 27 as that was the popular number associated with Gilles Villeneuve, Jacques’ father and the first Canadian to win a Formula I Grand Prix race way back in 1978.
During his informative and entertaining presentation, Drossos said he grew up in Penticton dreaming of racing and building racecars.
Instead of heading off to university with the money his parents had put aside for him, Drossos headed off to Ontario to attend a racing school run by Richard Spenard, who is recognized as the premier racing school operator in North America.
Still a teenager, Drossos landed a job building race engines for a race team operating out of the famed Mosport racetrack facility in Ontario.
“That was a pretty good deal for a guy right out of high school,” said Drossos.
During that time, he got to meet Jacques Villeneuve and Patrick Carpentier, another well-known Canadian Formula One racer, and they became friends.
If a racetrack facility in the middle of rural Ontario could attract drivers from around the world and hold huge race events with tens of thousands of spectators attending, he often dreamed of opening a similar facility in the South Okanagan, said Drossos.
Back in the early 1990s, Formula One racing had become big business and events like the Vancouver Indy in 1992 was attracting more than 50,000 spectators and big tobacco companies were sponsoring events and investing millions of dollars into promoting the sport, said Drossos.
Things changed dramatically early in the new millennium when “the era with big tobacco ended” and numerous regional race series across Canada disappeared within a couple of years, he said.
“The world has completely changed … there are no more professional race series’ in Canada and big tobacco has completely dropped out,” he said.
The good news is many wealthy Canadians own expensive sports cars and they have nowhere to drive them, he said.
“You can’t get out on the road and open up your sports car when the speed limits haven’t changed in Canada in 60 years,” he said.
Over the past decade, numerous “sports car country clubs and motorsports facilities similar to yacht clubs and exclusive tennis clubs” have opened up across the United States, he said.
During a ski trip to Mount Baldy Ski Area in 2012 where he was teaching a bunch of youngsters how to ski, Drossos was driving down McKinney Road and observed a huge chunk of land he believed would be perfect for a large motorsports facility.
He discovered the land belonged to the OIB, read about the Indian band’s successful business ventures and eventually contacted Chief Clarence Louie, who agreed to meet him and eventually led him on a tour of the site.
Louie eventually convinced him a nearby site might be even better and that is the site Drossos and his partners are currently negotiating with the OIB to lease for the next several decades.
“The site is perfect,” said Drossos.
The proposed facility is far away from any residential neighbourhood so there shouldn’t be any noise concerns, irrigation is available and the views of the beautiful South Okanagan mountains are staggering, he said.
After meeting with Louie, Drossos said he contacted Villeneuve and asked if he might be interested in designing a racetrack facility.
Villeneuve quickly came on board saying, “let’s see if we can do this.”
Penticton’s David King, one of the province’s prominent commercial real estate developers, knows Villeneuve and is an avid motorsports enthusiast and has become a huge backer of the project, said Drossos.
More than 100 executive members have already invested $30,000 each to make Area 27 a reality and the long-term goal is to have 300 members within the next two years, he said.
Completion of Phase One would allow concrete to be poured and allow members to race and test their cars, said Drossos.
Once 300 members are signed up, the plan is to then erect the clubhouse and build a full-scale training facility and numerous other amenities.
Once fully operational, Area 27 would not only allow members to test and race their vehicles, but revenue would also be generated by hosting corporate events during the shoulder seasons in spring and fall.
There are also plans to host “three or four major events” each year such as live music concerts that could attract as many as 10,000 people, he said.
Drossos ended his presentation stating being part of what promises to be one of the most unique and exciting motorsports facilities in North America “is a dream come true for a kid from Penticton. It really is.”
KEITH LACEY
Osoyoos Times
