2025 Town Hall Notes and Download
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Q+A
These notes are meant to capture the essence of the question-and-answer section of the meeting. Since the session was not recorded, they may not be exactly as verbalized. However, we tried to capture the thoughts as best possible via notes taken at the time.
Q: Media Relations seem to have broken down; lack of newspaper, radio, TV, coverage for the VPCC
A: (Jorge Romero): We are working with Gary Blockus, former Morning Call editor. Gary shared a list of media contacts for VPCC to use. We will continue to send press releases to these contacts. We are also building profiles of Friday Night racers which will be used to gain traction and create a story. It takes time and we are starting small and building back.
(Bob Martin) Legacy media is suffering, what we need to do is create new content that can be used for social media. When you talk about social media algorithms, it’s about activity. Encouraging the community to share, like, comment and engage to spread the word.
Q: (Scott Roth from TeamBSR/Bike & Sol): How do cycling teams help?
A: (Jorge Romero): It’s about building relationships and spreading the word. Encourage people, let them know about us. At one point Pee Wees skyrocketed, it was from word of mouth. Education is a key part of what we need to have the community adopt the velodrome as an activity for children.
Q: (Charles): I went to the World Championships and all the cyclists knew about Valley Preferred Cycling Center. Is there a way to promote the cyclists? Can you promote them?
A: (Jorge Romero): Regarding International racers, there is a lot of uncertainty because of the current environment, immigration can be an issue for some people. A word of caution: it is attractive to hear about international riders, but what is the point of supporting international riders when we have local riders to help grow. Local riders are a priority followed by international riders. USA versus the rest.
Q: (Charles): Can we start the meetings later? I come from Philadelphia.
Q: (Mark Krajci (aka Bird) from Gotham Cyclists): In the last year the UCI calendar has changed, used to be winter and now its summer, how does bringing UCI in work with the change of schedule?
A: (Jorge Romero): The UCI title itself doesn’t mean much, what’s important is having a solid field of athletes. Using the experience as a tool, providing support via host housing. We are not doing C1 events, where the organizer is responsible for providing athlete housing. We can’t afford that, so we are sticking with C2 events, but still want to provide support. We need to encourage the community to help with host housing and find ways to facilitate this to encourage non-local athletes to stay the whole season. It’s important to create a welcoming environment. We’re looking to increase the prize purse to be more competitive with other cycling events. The key is to entice riders to come in and provide something to encourage them to stay throughout the season. A week ago, I contacted USAC to see if our UCI races were approved and they indicated they didn’t know. Then, 3 days ago I went to UCI website and they were approved. Now we can start working on what we’re doing.
Follow up Q: Is the focus more on junior riders versus elite because they are easier to get? Bringing juniors here is a great opportunity, especially from South America – bringing juniors here is important and bringing more kids into the sport.
A: (Jorge Romero): Due to USAC scheduling a major event when we planned to have the Madison Cup, we had to move it and have substituted with l’Avenir Cup in that slot, which is a great junior-based event to bring juniors to Lehigh Valley. We need 1 – 2 countries to have racers, hoping for Canada or Mexico. We’re looking for B-level riders and B-level nations who have a harder time getting to events and score points.
Follow up Q: Where does one learn to be a good cyclist? Building endurance, experience riding on the road and safety is a huge issue for children. Gotham is a club of masters riders, BSR has younger people, do you go out and teach kids on the road?
Comment (Shawna Rockafellow): My daughters had a coach that would take them out and teach them things. As a result, they have good reputations on the road, my kids are safe/strong/etc., I feel like having another team T-Town team would be incredible for the community; a lot of new riders need a lot of skills.
A (Elspeth Huyett): Strong local coaches can help riders, we can do a better job steering them to coaches, bringing team T-Town back in the future would be a great opportunity.
A: (Jorge Romero): There is a lot of value of clubs. We have a lot of training programs and coaches, everything is fee-based with no opportunity to pay a yearly due and get that education. It will take time to build that. I see a lot of folks here who have been doing this for many years and this is a time where we need to pass the torch. We need people who will just do it because it’s a social thing. There were people who took care of us when we were developing. Now we need to pick up the slack and take care of the new riders. I spoke to President of Lehigh Valley Cycling Club. The club is mainly a veteran club with rides during the week which is convenient for retirees but not younger folks. I asked if they can organize things on the weekends. They agreed and have added a Saturday ride.
Q: (Tanya Kennedy): An issue with the juniors is the gap caused by COVID. Those BRL numbers were from pre-COVID and since then it’s hard to maintain those riders. If we’re inviting UCI and doing things like that, how are we bringing riders from other tracks? I think having a junior-specific event with funding would be great.
A: (Bob Martin) We could bring that into the 50th anniversary to help bring the community of velodrome operators together.
A (Jorge Romero): We’ve had conversations with Kissena, South Carolina, Detroit and LA. Those started during collegiates, but focused on junior stuff. It all comes down to numbers. Nothing can happen without the funding for it. What do we want to do, how much is it going to cost, and how do we get the funding for it? Anything we do, we want to make sure that we do things the right way the first time. In order to do that, we need to have the three pillars: Business, community and showmanship and need to maintain balance to incorporate these ideas. T-Town is a great idea as a club aspect. As a team, it discourages coaches and riders. A club would respect established coaches and their businesses.
Q (Andy Taus): Is there a marketing budget? It’s time to take an ad in the newspaper. I know what happened in the past and why we and the newspaper separated but we need to put something in the newspaper. In Thursday’s newspaper they have the GO Guide; can we get into those? Look to scale ads with maybe a photo of Friday night racing.
A: (Jorge Romero): Current budget doesn’t have marketing.
Q/Comment (Jack Simes): The most important element is the riders. The most important way is to recognize riders. Social media doesn’t sell tickets. Where do they get news, from the newspaper. When a PR person was hired from California, he was asked if can he write and the answer was he can make videos. You have to write the article 4x a week for each night of racing. Have a feature on one rider every week. People are not coming because it’s a great place to be – it needs to because it’s fun. We need to tell the story and become part of mainstream Lehigh Valley sport.
(Jack Simes, cont) Rule number 1 of velodrome racing is that everything spins from the top. It can’t be concerned with everything. If you put butts in seats, everything else works automatically. It’s a 3 – 5 year plan to do that. All the kids benefit if there is a place to go – to be fans, racers, community program riders. What draws them in is what’s on top. Come into a meeting like this and recognize the riders – the talent that is going to move those things forward.
Q/Comment (Diane Saunders): We needs to start ‘glazing’ athletes. It seems like other velodromes do a better job spotlighting their riders. We seemed to be so focused on survival that there’s been no glazing and riders don’t have a spotlight across the country. What strategies do you have to make this glaze happen?
A (Ray Ignosh): Love the lingo and the catchphrase, but this is with all due respect, we have multifaceted interests. One of the notes I took down is infrastructure. When I came here for a job, the first place I went to was the velodrome, which happened to be a day when all the flags were up and it was mecca. There is a ton of memories and history that I have. Jack (Simes) mentioned the glaze, the top down. Over years and years all of these people have had these conversations. We talked about the regional program. We’re talking about the top right now and it’s the fun stuff. Regional development clubs, foundational support. One thing that infrastructure, if we collectively, start at the top again it becomes like the Washington monument, tall, tippy, etc. Track cycling is a niche sport of a niche sport. We are not a pyramid if we don’t have the foundation. I am asking everyone to think about the foundational aspects. We need to rebuild the foundation, that is juniors and giving them something to aspire to. There’s a whole bunch of stuff around that. Infrastructure needs help and support. We are going back to basics. The person who has the street credit who I would like to ask is Kim Geist. Asking Kim to comment on this.
Comment: (Kim Giest) I heard about velodrome through word of mouth. I went through all the community programs, which were free – and have been brought back. Including several iterations of AP, BRL, and then I joined a club. While riding for the club I had a private coach locally and that was the driving force behind the whole career. To me, getting riders in early and providing them the opportunity is key. The top-down approach is shaky. I was inspired by Friday nights, but it was more of a sense of community and being pushed daily by a large, strong base of riders.
Q (Charlie Wehr from Sticky Pig): As a non-rider, I am not in the community. I am in the kitchen. Foundation, infrastructure and niche sport of a niche sport gets it. I see it from a lot of angles because I am there all day. This is a very nice facility. Are there plans to use the facility as a revenue generation? A lot of times the facility is empty and not used.
A (Jorge Romero): As tenants, our agreements is that we will produce cycling events. We have discussed having a car show and we encountered a few things with the county and how careful we have to thread the needle with activities that are not cycling related. We can find a way around this, but at the end of the day, we need to make sure the bases are covered. No matter what the endeavor is, we need to be sure we’re financially sound to be able to try new things. Not a no, just that we need time. Everyone has their own perspective and we can’t pull on everything. Friday night does not make money, we lose money. Every point that is presented is valid, but we need to just figure it out.
A (Bob Martin): Whatever we do, it needs to support the main goal of the organization – I think that has to be on the table. Giving value to the stakeholders and visibility to our riders.
Q /Comment (Brian Wade): I moved here from Delco [Delaware County]. I knew about the velodrome from David Gulick. I was the President of Delaware Valley Bicycle Club. I can’t help with attracting racers, but I can help with a club night. We could invite all the local clubs and expand into Philly. Give them an opportunity to come up. Although getting up here with traffic on the blue route can be a challenge. I got interested in racing from sitting next to Joanne and Richard (Trimpi) and being taught about racing. I went to a NASCAR event and had the opportunity to learn about NASCAR via a personal tour in the infield. It made the experience more enjoyable. Perhaps tap on coaches, teams, cycling leagues, etc. to educate fans.
A/Comment (Neal Stansbury): We don’t have a good scoreboard, speaker system. That would help share more information. One of the things we are working on is trying to get to the base so that we can afford to buy things and make a better experience. Building entertainment value. Perhaps we could do seminars in the plaza before racing and have opportunities to get into the pit and explain things. Can we offer tours?
Q (Diane Saunders): I have a follow up to previous question as it wasn’t answered. It was clear when Jorge came on board that the youth started to come back. How are we promoting young athletes?
A (Jorge Romero): Riders are getting forms to fill out to learn about what they do to build stories, as we interact with them, we will create the stories to promote them. We have a large empty office that is being converted into a studio for interviews with a camera. We can also go outside, interview riders and make it so that they connect with our community via YouTube on top of having formal presentations and interviews. We want to create an environment to promote riders. The challenge is that it’s me and everything else. Kelli is full-handed with operations, Wendy is managing the budget. When it comes to marketing, permitting, etc. there’s a lot to do. We don’t have the budget to hire people to come in and the worst thing we can do is to have people hop in and cover it. Our plan is to engage with riders, hold interviews and have them tell their stories to start creating bonds with our wider community.
Q (Ed Slaughter): Bob, can you provide an overview of how the relationship is with the county and township?
A (Bob Martin): We have a good relationship and there is an opportunity to build on this. The County Executive’s term is over so there will be new people coming into the county government. I am working to make sure they are aware of what the velodrome is. They are tough on the lease, but they recognize that having this facility and programs is a net positive for the quality of life and the County tourism budget.
Q/Comments: ArtQuest was brought up as being very active in the area, which generated a lot of discussion about possible opportunities to partner with ArtsQuest and/or can we do something with Musikfest?
Meeting adjourned ~8pm