Blog note: this article references a recent grand jury report addressing the relationship between county government and SCRAMP.
Laguna Seca >> Lavonne Chin has come full circle.
When the longtime Monterey County parks employee was hired more than two decades ago as special events manager, Chin’s first office was at the county-owned Laguna Seca Recreation Area and she was charged with overseeing raceway concessionaire the Sports Car Racing Association of the Monterey Peninsula and its plans and operations, and managing a series of county-backed events at the county park ranging from Spirit West Coast and Cherries Jubilee to the Laguna Seca Days concert series and the still-burgeoning Sea Otter Classic.
Over the years, Chin’s duties expanded to encompass a series of events at the county’s other seven parks, and Fort Ord’s county-controlled open space, that she helped build and now number more than 90 per year, even as she built long-standing relationships with the SCRAMP organization from top administrators and staff to volunteers.
Now, Chin is essentially back where she started, returning to Laguna Seca oversight, albeit under a significantly different situation. She has been moved into the Monterey County Administrative Office where she will work for Assistant County Administrative Officer Dewayne Woods as the county’s top liaison between the county and SCRAMP overseeing the new three-year Laguna Seca management contract signed in January that shifted the raceway founder and longtime concessionaire into a management role for the entire facility, including all its events and operations. Woods, the county’s contract manager, said Chin will be available to assist with other parks events given her historical and institutional knowledge, but her main focus will be on the new relationship and cooperation between the county and SCRAMP and efforts to maximize the use of Laguna Seca and its amenities, and grow the business while initiating a series of improvements.
“Lavonne’s priority will be Laguna Seca with her vast background in the Laguna Seca business,” Woods said. “She’ll be the boots on the ground every day. She’ll be the pivot point in managing the contract with SCRAMP. The county has to be very engaged.”
The 62-year-old Chin, a Salinas resident who is married to downtown Salinas restaurateur Gordon Chin, said her new focus does feel like a homecoming of sorts, though the challenge is different.
“(Laguna Seca’s) kind of home for me because that’s where I started,” she said. “A new challenge is always exciting.”
Chin said she has always had a positive relationship with SCRAMP over the years, even during the difficult and often acrimonious past several years when the nonprofit organization struggled financially during and after the recession, prompting the county to begin searching for a potential replacement concessionaire and drawing a public rebuke from SCRAMP leaders.
But she acknowledged things have clearly changed for the better between the two entities, and noted a new enthusiasm coming from SCRAMP representatives, as well as organizational changes in the form of a new Board of Governors to replace a much larger board.
Woods said the new Laguna Seca management contract and increased oversight emerged from years of dysfunction between the two entities, and a recent civil grand jury report that blasted the county and SCRAMP for their lack of cooperation and oversight at Laguna Seca. In response, the county promised to shift Laguna Seca oversight to the County Administrative Office. That move was followed by the new management contract and a settlement agreement in which the county bought out all SCRAMP’s assets in exchange for cash considerations and a resolution of all past financial disputes.
Woods said the result has been a change in the “fundamental business model” from “fragmented” to “unified.” Before, he said, the county and SCRAMP sharing the Laguna Seca facility for a series of events and other track uses with revenue streams spread among many different entities, and now all events and track uses are managed by SCRAMP, along with the park’s campground and pavilion and lake bed venues, under the county’s ownership and oversight.
SCRAMP’s board president Michael Smith, who also serves as interim CEO in the wake of longtime CEO Gill Campbell’s reassignment, said there’s also a new spirit of cooperation between the two entities. Smith praised Supervisor Mary Adams, whose district includes Laguna Seca, and Woods for their willingness to learn without preconceived notions about the SCRAMP operation and Laguna Seca’s importance to the community. He said SCRAMP has also changed for the better, making the transition from a “bureaucratic” relationship with the county to “the closest thing to a true partnership” it has ever had at Laguna Seca.
“It was a difficult painful time but I’m glad it happened; out of crisis new paths developed,” he said. “There’s a culture of problem-solving rather than barriers.”
Smith added that he believed Chin would better be able to help influence the Laguna Seca operation in the future given the new “free flow of ideas.”
“Lavonne has good ideas, and she’s being listened to now,” he said.
In fact, the new relationship is so strengthened in less than a year that county supervisors last month rejected in closed session a bid by the nonprofit Friends of Laguna Seca to secure a long-term concession contract at Laguna Seca, one that included a promise of a $10 million up-front investment, and $25 million over the life of the contract.
Now it appears SCRAMP has the inside track on securing a long-term management deal for Laguna Seca, provided the next few years prove successful.
Smith, Chin and Woods all agree there’s room to expand the Laguna Seca business operation, all within the confines of the 34-year-old use permit, which would help pay for needed upgrades, repair and maintenance.
Woods said the facility is at the beginning of a “transformational period” right now and he has “high expectations for a higher performing facility” capable of funding improvements, such as a new start-finish line, designed to make it “worthy of an international audience.” He noted the partnership had already brought in the prestigious Porsche Rennsport Reunion event for next year, which he called the largest such event in the Northern Hemisphere. He added that SCRAMP’s historical allowed use limit of five major events — based on attendance and noise levels — is currently full, but the county’s limit of five large event days is not, and there’s plenty of room for more of the 12 minor events SCRAMP has been allowed.
Chin said only about a third of the county’s mix of 35 large, medium and small events — based on attendance — are currently full, leaving room for a significant increase. Meanwhile, she said track rental days are up from recent years, as is corporate use of the track for testing, two more important revenue streams for the facility.
August 19, 2017
Monterey County Herald
By Jim Johnson
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