Alright big talkers...

rodney eppes said:
Back when it closed, JC worked every angle there was. Even came up with a offer to lease, & amount, per year. The original Controllers, laughed at the offer. I guess their not laughing Now!
BTW, I forgot to toss it out, a few days back, News told of another large parcel of land being put in Conservatory. I'm thinking it's part of Pisgah.
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Found it;> Foothills Conservancy Purchases 118 acres along River in Caldwell County for Pisgah Forest.
Globe area along Hwy 90 & Johns River, between Blowing Rock & Collettsville. Named Burntfield Rock, after the Stream that runs through it. It's undeveloped property. CTB & others, at one time, trail rode all over this general area. Don't know if we touched This acreage.
 
Let me throw a Water Balloon at Calli & any other suggested parks. There is a Stream, running through & out of it! I Don't know what Gulches does, about their Stream, but That's what closed Telleco. And environmental issues have only grown, over the years! I see Run off, Pollution, by /from, Air, Water, & Sound, being the major issues with any such endeavors.
 
rodney eppes said:
Let me throw a Water Balloon at Calli & any other suggested parks. There is a Stream, running through & out of it! I Don't know what Gulches does, about their Stream, but That's what closed Telleco. And environmental issues have only grown, over the years! I see Run off, Pollution, by /from, Air, Water, & Sound, being the major issues with any such endeavors.
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Gulches is on a river that floods it in heavy rain. Don't know of a constant stream on it. Yes when it's wet areas like Shipwreck have water on them.
 
77GreenMachine said:
Ok so imagine this. I have discussed this at length with a few people, some think its fantastic and some thing it will never work. I have never voiced it here, but here goes a condensed version.

There is currently a big shift in the off road world and social media. In a positive way I believe. IG pages and YouTube Channels like Beat Not Babied, Flex Rocks and Rollovers and many others have tens of thousands of subscribers and stuff now.

Now imagine a Non Profit that asked the off road community to subscribe to a $5/month membership and all that money goes back into off road parks. Such as, Gulches could apply for a grant to the Non Profit for a gravel parking lot. AOP could do the same and get more gravel. Choccolocco could update bath houses, the list goes on for what could be done. Purchase adjoining land for expansion, etc.

It would all be done legit, but also done in full light of the public and supporters. Such as someone (like me) coordinates 3 local to the area bidders to come out and bid the work to be done. The estimates are disclosed and chosen all on social media. Updates get posted regular. Nothing formal, it could literally be holding a selfie stick thing and go live like "Hey guys I'm here at AOP where the graders and spreading out the 300 tons of gravel we bought, this is where your $5/month is going. Tag a friend, encourage your crew to support the North American Off Road Association" (NAORA) or whatever the hell we'd call it.

Some quick math:

Followers:

Flex Rocks & Rollovers 80k
Beat Not Babied 195k
Bleepin Jeep 14k
Rock Star Garage 745k (skewed numbers due to drink, lets call it 100k)
Crawl 5280 5k

Contacting those folks to get a mention, or do a short video together to capture their followers and spread the word, cause surely they be down to help.

Now lets assume many of those followers all follow the same page, and many of them just like the content/posts on their feed. So on the low end lets say only 10% of those numbers are passionate about the off road world and would support. That's 39,400 people. But lets thin it even more and say of that 10%, only 10% of that number are actually willing to financially support this cause. That's 3,940 people at $5/month which totals $19,700 per month. Obviously there would be some overhead, but imagine what could be done with that money. I believe the numbers could be higher, and I certainly believe that once it started and people were truly seeing results, it would snow ball and more people would get behind it. The SxS crowd too.

Golden Mountain could have been purchased if this thing really took off. It could have been owned by the non-profit or placed in a holdings company. $11.5M for Callelentee might be a stretch, maybe could buy a portion, but other parks that have gone away could have been purchased, or improvements made that would have kept them open.
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So I have thought of a similar idea... but more direct. If someone had the followers, I believe that you could purchase the park based on what you had on youtube. If you created a video a few days a week showing trail updates, or construction, or riding, etc. And then get other Influencers or TV shows, etc to come. Or host events. Have fans vote on different ideas, or obstacles, or trails, etc. If you put in the time to create the content, you could easily bring in the funds to keep it going or pay for it. But getting the following is the hard part.

I wonder if there was a way to get some of the Influencers in the area, or offroad companies, that would go in to "sponsor" the park. Basically put cash up for purchase. Essentially they would be a board of directors for it. Or possibly even see if other parks like Brimstone, Windrock, etc might be interested in purchasing it, or going in on it?

Tennessee (TWRA) already manages some offroad parks, similar to the Hatfield trails in WV. It would be cool if could somehow get the property added into something like that. They get grants to pay for maintenance, but not sure about the purchase price, or how beneficial it is for the state to take on more.
 
@DougH
paradisePWoffrd said:
So I have thought of a similar idea... but more direct. If someone had the followers, I believe that you could purchase the park based on what you had on youtube. If you created a video a few days a week showing trail updates, or construction, or riding, etc. And then get other Influencers or TV shows, etc to come. Or host events. Have fans vote on different ideas, or obstacles, or trails, etc. If you put in the time to create the content, you could easily bring in the funds to keep it going or pay for it. But getting the following is the hard part.

I wonder if there was a way to get some of the Influencers in the area, or offroad companies, that would go in to "sponsor" the park. Basically put cash up for purchase. Essentially they would be a board of directors for it. Or possibly even see if other parks like Brimstone, Windrock, etc might be interested in purchasing it, or going in on it?

Tennessee (TWRA) already manages some offroad parks, similar to the Hatfield trails in WV. It would be cool if could somehow get the property added into something like that. They get grants to pay for maintenance, but not sure about the purchase price, or how beneficial it is for the state to take on more.
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Just look at what Cleetus McFarland has done on youtube, bought an abandoned race track and has been spending an absolute ton on upgrading it. All paid for by merch and youtube views. A big off road channel could do the same but you need the base first....
 
DSM Turbos said:
@DougH


Just look at what Cleetus McFarland has done on youtube, bought an abandoned race track and has been spending an absolute ton on upgrading it. All paid for by merch and youtube views. A big off road channel could do the same but you need the base first....
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I think Cleetus is making a million a year just off youtube not including sponsors. Then if you could open a fab shop, people send their vehicles in to be modded. Then have a place to test them out when they are ready for pickup.
 
83oldyoda4x4 said:
I think Cleetus is making a million a year just off youtube not including sponsors. Then if you could open a fab shop, people send their vehicles in to be modded. Then have a place to test them out when they are ready for pickup.
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Its so hard to guess how much each person makes as it depends on the ad placement where the country of viewership comes from a lot of other factors.

But.... most say right around $1M offf youtube - How Much Money Cleetus McFarland Makes On YouTube - Net Worth - Naibuzz Cleetus McFarland's net worth is freakin' inspiring!

How many extra videos he's done this year I wouldn't doubt it makes near 2 this year
 
DSM Turbos said:
@DougH

A big off road channel could do the same but you need the base first....
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I mean...isn't that basically what WhistlinDixie does? Does dumb shit with mostly 4x4's and makes a killing. The sad thing about it is, I think that kind of dumbshit is what would be needed for the financial support...which really isn't what the offroad community needs. Cleetus can and does, do dumb shit too...but the 'street outlaw' crowd doesn't seem to get near the backlash as the 4x4 world.
 
obullfish said:
Or that annoying damn light bright chick.
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Annoying or not, they definitely have great networking skills, and honestly who I thought of first when the topic turned this way.

Duane
 
ghost said:
Never heard of him....
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Get off my lawn!!!

I’m a big Cleetus fan. Enjoy most of his stuff.

I could never put my life out there like that though, and I don’t think wheeling once a month is enough content to make any headway. Plus, editing sucks a huge one.
 
I'm in for doing stunts to get viewers :D

I've been thinking about a new career path anyway.
 
Nobody wants to pay 5 bucks to see a fuzzy picture of my cornhole. I figured it'd do better...live and learn. Who knew?
 
The problem with all of these plans, even (and particularly) the well laid out ones like @77GreenMachine etc with a nonprofit and such is that somebody, or a group of somebody's have to be the boss... and put in a ton of time. It's a serious commitment. Like, to really do it, it's a job.
Otherwise it ends up being liek a lot of other volunteer things wit ha bunch of guys with ideas but little actually happening because nobody it actually putting in serious time to make things happen.

So which of you are gonna quit your job and work on this as your thing?
This place is already full of dudes that have halfway unfinished rigs and tons of incplete projects bc we are busy and have other htings to do....

And yes, I'm happy to say, they are great ideas and I'll support but [finger on nose] "not it".
 
Time is holding me back. And I’ve researched starting a non profit quite a bit. I would need to spend a few grand and basically have a lawyer do everything. It would be a ton of time to get started. But once started, I would eventually quit my job and pretty much full time be coordinating these visits, bids, projects and updates at all the off road parks in the southeast and eventually expand to even more areas.
But I’m guilty of being a dreamer. The non profit start up is fuzzy cause there’s nothing at all like what I envision to compare to.
 
I was waiting for that correlation!
 
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