So it wasn't a simple job?
Bader: No, it was half-million dollars and I had to then get permission from all the land owners from the track to the sewer line. I had to go to the county, the airport, the Linder family, and I had to go the township trustee—who I'd forgotten since I cross his road to get to the city.
We also didn't have three-phase power, and needed it because of the elevators and ESPN, for their requirements for their production trailer so they brought a three-phase line to us and we poured it and put it in place and we now have a six-inch water line instead of a one-inch line. We have a fire hydrant so we have power, water, and sewer, along with the skyboxes, along with our media center, which we are very proud of and we extended the control tower. We put an elevator on both sides of the track so that as we build skyboxes on the east side, elevators are already there for access to those boxes, so it was a pretty involved project.
We ended up paving close to 25 acres, give or take.
Are you satisfied with the results?
Bader: I'm really happy with everything we did. The only thing I'm going to redesign is the turn around at the end of the race track. It's not what I want; I'm looking at everything we can do to make it better.
Are you back to working a full-time job here?
Bader: I am, right now, working here everyday on a full-time basis with the team. I've got a good team with me, there's a total of 14, including myself.
But your son is now running the track right?
Bader: Yes, Billy is running the racetrack; he handles all the strategy, scheduling, planning and all the marketing, formatting. We talk—we’ve always talked—we're full 50/50 partners; it used to be 51/49, but it’s 50/50 now. I'm purely overseeing Park Services, which I've broken down into six departments and one of those departments is expansion, which is where I focus my time.
The other side of that is servicing the events, from track prep to trash removal to setting out things, like last week was kids’ night so we put out a playground and did some activity planning for the kids. There's an events staff, an agronomy staff, landscaping and stuff. I want this (NRP) to be like Disney. We’re 260 acres now.
What’s the seating capacity at SMP now?
Bader: I believe 31,000 and that includes that one set of bleachers way down there past the grandstands (beyond the finish-line scoreboards).
DRO NRP is one of the only tracks we know off that has boards that put the numbers up on both sides. How did that come about?
Bader We did it because we park two-thirds of our cars downwind from the scoreboard and they can’t see what’s going on. Now they can see just be looking up. We’ll probably put the red LEDs in because you can really see those. When we bought new scoreboards we just put the old ones on the back so you can see from down there on the other side. We put new faces on them and new readouts and mounted them in place of the diatonic board. It just made sense, but it wasn’t my idea; the racers have been telling me for years that we need scoreboards on the back of those things.
What can you tell us about your departure from IHRA? Why did you leave just before the last race at Rockingham that year?
Bader: My strategy was to leave after the banquet, but IHRA was putting together their 2005 plan and since I wouldn’t be the person there, the preference was that in order to scrap the format and plan for 2005 that it needed to be Aaron’s (Polburn) plan. Whatever he wanted to do, he needed time to implement, so that allowed him to take over immediately and implement the changes he wanted and I didn’t argue with that.
Did the way it went down cause a problem for you?
Bader: Oh no, no hard feelings.
Do you miss your work there?
Bader: More than anything else, I miss the people.
I felt that I had done a very good job of getting it to that point, but I felt that perhaps to take it on and move it farther along needed a lot of enthusiasm, attitude and energy and I was getting tired.
I wanted IHRA to be successful. Everyone rallied together and clearly we birthed it and gave it a lot of pride and energy. I loved my hours back then and I was averaging about 106 hours a week, going in always before 7 and not leaving until 1 in the morning or later. But after a couple years of that I would go in at 7 and go home at 8 and Deb said, ‘What’s wrong?’ I said, ‘I’m just tired.’
I was feeling reactive instead of proactive. I felt like I was doing more harm than good. I actually talked exit strategy or some plan, but what do I do? I had committed 10 years to this, figuring I started at 55 and at the end of 10 years I’d be 65 and I made it seven years. I thought I had three more years to go and didn’t know if I could make it. I was at a point where someone healthy needed to step in and take it from there.