{"id":426291,"date":"2026-10-13T05:36:33","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T05:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/426291\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T05:36:33","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T05:36:33","slug":"does-the-proposed-emerald-coast-motor-club-have-a-location-problem-guest-column","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/426291\/","title":{"rendered":"Does the proposed Emerald Coast Motor Club have a location problem? | Guest column"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>            <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"responsive-image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/fe4834dc-ac81-4594-99fe-263e8b94e5d0.jpeg\"   width=\"1200\" height=\"674\" title=\"A typewriter was an auction item at the 75th annual East Middleboro 4-H Fair on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026.\" alt=\"A typewriter was an auction item at the 75th annual East Middleboro 4-H Fair on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026.\"\/><\/p>\n<p>        A typewriter was an auction item at the 75th annual East Middleboro 4-H Fair on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026.<\/p>\n<p>                Marc Vasconcellos\/The Enterprise<\/p>\n<p>            USA TODAY Network, Reuters<\/p>\n<p>In an interview talking about what makes his private motorsports club so successful, Brad Oleshansky, developer of Tampa&#8217;s Motor Enclave and the man who brought the private motorsports model to the U.S., put it bluntly: &#8220;You can&#8217;t be in a rural area.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Walton County is unquestionably a rural community. Florida law even says so. Yet Emerald Coast Motor Club&#8217;s (ECMC) developers propose to build a private club on nearly four times the acreage of the Motor Enclave in DeFuniak Springs. Hillsborough County, where The Motor Enclave operates, has nearly 17 times Walton&#8217;s population and nearly 13 times its employer establishments.<\/p>\n<p>Oleshansky says garage presales and installment payments helped finance $130 million of Tampa&#8217;s $150 million construction cost, while corporate events sustain profitability. Can ECMC sell enough luxury garages to finance construction that an illustrative scenario puts at $200 million, then attract enough corporate clients to sustain operations? That figure is an estimate, not a developer-released budget.<\/p>\n<p>Oleshansky says he chose Tampa after studying customer profiles, wealth, growth and vehicle registrations. He described buyers who want a club &#8220;20 minutes away,&#8221; close enough to enjoy it regularly and be home for dinner. Walton&#8217;s beach visitors are not automatically year-round garage buyers in DeFuniak Springs.<\/p>\n<p>The corporate market matters, too. &#8220;You&#8217;ve got to be close to where the corporate clients are because that&#8217;s the business end of it,&#8221; Oleshansky said. Vacation traffic alone does not establish demand for recurring corporate events.<\/p>\n<p>Shouldn&#8217;t prospective investors be asking the same location question? A larger development does not automatically create a larger customer base. Before committing capital, investors should ask for evidence that this smaller market can support the proposed scale of this massive project.<\/p>\n<p>ECMC has not publicly released a detailed construction budget, financing plan or garage sales figures. The project&#8217;s projected county revenue does not answer those questions.<\/p>\n<p>County approval cannot produce garage buyers or corporate bookings. If the project begins and stalls, what would be left for the surrounding community? Read the full analysis at: scrapthetrackindefuniak.org\/emerald-coast-motor-club-location-problem\/<\/p>\n<p>Kimberly Falconer lives in DeFuniak Springs<\/p>\n<p>This article originally appeared on Northwest Florida Daily News: Does the proposed Emerald Coast Motor Club have a location problem? | Guest column<\/p>\n<p>Reporting by Kimberly Falconer, For the Daily News \/ Northwest Florida Daily News<\/p>\n<p>USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect<\/p>\n<p>Copyright Reuters or USA Today Network via Reuters Connect<\/p>\n<p class=\"summary gray\">This story was originally published October 11, 2026 at 5:09 AM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A typewriter was an auction item at the 75th annual East Middleboro 4-H Fair on Saturday, Sept. 5,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-426291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}