Proponents say a project to build an indoor professional bicycling track in Eagleville, Montgomery County, should not quash budding hopes to build another velodrome 290 miles away in Brownsville, Fayette County.
Development groups on opposite ends of the state propose building indoor cycling tracks of international standard to host cycling events and serve as small-market venues for entertainment like concerts.
In Brownsville, those involved with a project attempting to woo USA Cycling to move its headquarters there from Colorado, see the potential construction of a publicly owned velodrome as a last chance to revitalize the borough's desolate downtown business district. But no funding has been nailed down.
In Eagleville, a private management firm connected to the Pro Cycling Tour expects by mid-February to complete the purchase of a 14-acre tract near Valley Forge National Park for a $16.7 million velodrome that could open in early 2008.
Professional cycling organizations have been scouting East Coast sites for a covered track since the first indoor velodrome opened in California in 2004. Although there are 22 velodromes in the country, that is the only indoor site.
With the increasing popularity of cycling, Pennsylvania could support two Olympic-styled arenas, claims one proponent.
"I always say, 'One baseball stadium doesn't make a sport,' " said David Chauner, president and CEO of the Pro Cycling Tour and director of the group that will manage the velodrome in Montgomery County.
"Our hope is that we can see indoor velodromes springing up all over the country, but it's the first few that are going to be the models."
Sources involved with the Brownsville project insist its proximity to California University of Pennsylvania, multiple interstates, the Mon-Fayette Expressway and major cities like Washington, D.C., New York City, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia make it a prime spot.
They hope it will boost the tax rolls in the financially troubled borough forced to lay off its police force last month.
Since October, a committee of public officials and private business leaders has supported research for the project, envisioned for the Snowden Square section. Member Ray Koffler said C.B. Richard Ellis, a real estate management firm, expects to provide next month an outline of what will be needed to launch a feasibility study.
"We're collecting information for a whole series of consultants for what it would take to perform a competent feasibility study," said Jack Norris, chief executive officer of Ellis' Pittsburgh affiliate.
20 years in the making
Along with a velodrome seating 3,000 to 5,000, the estimated $125 million development highlights include a parking lot, dormitory and restoration of downtown buildings to create an early-1900s appearance.
No funding has been landed, although proponents say the 2005-06 state capital budget was amended in July to reserve $15 million for velodrome construction and $5 million for a Brownsville revitalization project.
In spite of that, Brownsville collaborators imagine the town's name as intertwined with cycling as Williamsport's is stitched into Little League baseball lore.
They've asked USA Cycling, the official cycling organization recognized by the U.S. Olympic Committee, to consider moving the offices for its 58,000-membership base to Brownsville. Membership has jumped by 30 percent since 2002.
For the project's lead architect, a 1980 Brownsville graduate, it's a follow-through on ideas posed 20 years ago in a college thesis about the borough's decline. "They (USA Cycling) really are attracted to the notion of coming to a place where they can train quietly, and really be a part of the community and have equity in the area around them," said Jeff Slusarick, a principal for Astorino, an architectural, engineering and environmental consulting firm in Pittsburgh. "We brought it to them and my understanding is they're not actively pursuing anywhere."
"Do I think overnight that it's going to be a bed-and-breakfast magnet, or Branson? All I know is nothing is happening yet, so why not try something?" Slusarick said.
Astorino's work in the sports world includes PNC Park, the Blair County Ballpark home of the minor league Altoona Curve, and the Steelers and Pitt Panthers training complex on Pittsburgh's South Side. Other important players in the project include Schuermann Architects, a German firm specializing in athletic tracks since 1925, and civil engineering firm Trans Associates, which has a corporate headquarters in Pittsburgh.
The consultants' experience makes Koffler believe the project could work, although controversial Churchill real-estate speculators Ernest and Marilyn Liggett own four of the targeted properties. The Liggetts, who bought more than 100 borough properties in the 1990s, aborted plans for a strip mall and an Indian casino.
"We are still in the ballpark and we're trying to do something right," Koffler said. "We're not dealing with Indian burial grounds."
Legal matters
In court testimony last fall in a case involving borough code violations, Ernest Liggett contended they have refused to demolish some blighted downtown buildings they own because of tax credits that could be important for future development.
The Liggetts declined to be interviewed for this article.
Pro Cycling's Chauner said he doesn't view his project as competing with the Brownsville project.
His group spent five years looking for a place to anchor a $25 million development, including a 150-room hotel and a restaurant.
Last year, Chauner completed the first of a two-phase feasibility study in Coatesville, Chester County, but city officials determined the only available site wouldn't work.
"They didn't see the velodrome as being the highest and best use for that parcel of land," said Harry G. Walker III, Coatesville's city manager and the redevelopment authority's executive director.
The project shifted to Lower Providence Township and Chauner is seeking permits from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the remediation of a former semiconductor plant that has been vacant for seven years. "It's not a question of if, it's a question of when because of all the red tape you have to go through," Chauner said.
While he's trying to position his group's velodrome as an East Coast training center for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Chauner said he'd like to see the creation of an indoor cycling league, with events rolling into nearby towns.
Brownsville could be one of those towns.
"We'd love to help them," Chauner said. "We'd love to work with them. There's a need to combine energies and commitment to work."
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