I see a lot of complaints so far this year, about venue, organization, etc., but few ideas on how to improve things moving forward. It would seem Ocean Downs is over as a venue for the event, so let's forget that. The school was meh, and we probably won't be back there. This place (Fort Whaley) had/has potential, but the traffic issue may kill it. So what are our alternatives?
I doubt inlet is viable, not large enough. And this time of year it's in use for some event nearly every week.
Convention Center certainly isn't big enough.
Jay has discussed buying property, but having 50+ acres for one weekend a year is expensive and probably not viable unless he can develop it to be multi-use, and even then traffic may be an issue. And finding that much land that's open and zoned for this sort of thing in Worcester County may be a near impossibility.
So, good people of Vortex, what suggestions have you? Would Salisbury be too far away? Ballfield/Winterplace park are big enough but 30 minutes out.
Getting Town of Ocean City on board would be huge, but Mayor Meehan and his staff and the council don't really like us, so that would be difficult at best.
Honestly, I'm at a loss. I know from talking to Shoup that he does truly care about H2Oi, but it's got to be a real headache at this point for him. I'm not sure what we can do as a community to help with the actual logistics of location and staff, but a huge help would be ending the stupid crap (theft, destruction of property, screaming and yelling and asshattery). I know we'd be in a lot better spot with local authorities if this sort of behavior hadn't become so prominent.
Anyone have any realistic comments/suggestions? I know Cory/Jay will see this, so perhaps some good will come of the discussion. I just hate to see all this negative without some input into fixing it.
I doubt inlet is viable, not large enough. And this time of year it's in use for some event nearly every week.
Convention Center certainly isn't big enough.
Jay has discussed buying property, but having 50+ acres for one weekend a year is expensive and probably not viable unless he can develop it to be multi-use, and even then traffic may be an issue. And finding that much land that's open and zoned for this sort of thing in Worcester County may be a near impossibility.
So, good people of Vortex, what suggestions have you? Would Salisbury be too far away? Ballfield/Winterplace park are big enough but 30 minutes out.
Getting Town of Ocean City on board would be huge, but Mayor Meehan and his staff and the council don't really like us, so that would be difficult at best.
Honestly, I'm at a loss. I know from talking to Shoup that he does truly care about H2Oi, but it's got to be a real headache at this point for him. I'm not sure what we can do as a community to help with the actual logistics of location and staff, but a huge help would be ending the stupid crap (theft, destruction of property, screaming and yelling and asshattery). I know we'd be in a lot better spot with local authorities if this sort of behavior hadn't become so prominent.
Anyone have any realistic comments/suggestions? I know Cory/Jay will see this, so perhaps some good will come of the discussion. I just hate to see all this negative without some input into fixing it.