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What is Scuderia Southwest Up To? Part 1
By David Crofford
Posted: 2019-08-13T19:53:00Z


I thought I'd provide you with some of the thoughts that went into our current direction.

Part 1:  First a little history:
If you've been around with us long enough to have participated back when we were at Gainey Village then you've been along for quite a ride with us.  What started out as a very small get-together grew into a very popular gathering.  We got to be so crowded at Gainey that people would arrive at 4:00am just to make sure they got in. It was so busy that there were a couple of temper issues.  We actually discussed moving for a year before finally deciding to move. Our biggest fear was losing the small intimate feeling and it was just a really nice location.  But each month new issues would arise and so we started looking for a new location. Even after we found the new Scottsdale 101 location we still debated internally if we should move or not. One day we received notice that a Sprouts grocery store would be moving in and so our decision was made, we had to move.

The YAM team was terrific and offered up an amazing amount of space that dwarfed the space than we had at Gainey. That first April in 2017 we started with 486 spaces and we were extremely nervous about how many people would actually make the trip farther north. It was so big that we added an American car section. Needless to say, we were blown away by the crowd. We soon added more space...and then more...and then more.  Then one day we looked up and we were using almost 1000 spaces!  

We stepped back and started discussing the size of the event. It was so big that it was hard to manage with just a handful of volunteers. We had long time friends that became reticent to come with special cars because things could be so chaotic. The growth really took off by word of mouth, but try as we might, we couldn't communicate with everybody and many people assumed it was an open free-for-all event with no governing body. 

We had three problems that we needed to address:
1 - We were losing long time friends with the huge size
2 - It was becoming unmanageable with the limited staff
3 - YAM was beginning to get complaints from stores because customers couldn't find parking.

These issues came to a head at the April 2019 event and it was a bad time for us to address it with multiple key people traveling or about to travel - and so we said stop.  We decided to put the event on hiatus until we were all together and could hash out what we wanted to do.

Next: what we've rolled out
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