[Accrs] Business meeting and debrief on meeting with Jerome

[Alameda County Central Railroad Society]

For those of you who missed the business meeting, let me fill in the 
gaps in what I mentioned Thursday.

 1. Jerome liked everything about our proposal except the requested
    guaranteed time in the building.
 2. He proceeded to say there is no rush to tear down our building or
    the one to the west of us.  The reason would be because they are old.
 3. He and the BOD love the trains.
 4. I asked how long he thought it would be until the wrecking ball hit
    our building.  He sort of shrugged and said 5 years.
 5. They will be putting part of the antique equipment in the north
    section of our building for display during the Fair which means no
    tents in front of that part of the building.
 6. Nothing was said about needing our "foot print" to rent more space.
 7. The back area which has been used by the Good Guys for storage
    during their shows may soon be located elsewhere and all of that
    area between the buildings will be opened up for traffic.  So, the
    Good Guys shows will be in our future at least by August.
 8. He will write us a letter listing the points we discussed and it
    will be forwarded to the membership when we receive it.
 9. In reality, we have been on a one year contract with them for quite
    awhile.  The last one we got was in 2016 and continues from year to
    year unless they issue a new one.  That contract indicates they can
    give us as little as a 30 day notice to vacate.  With his estimate
    of 5 years, we aren't really in a much different situation than
    before all this started a year ago.
10. He would like to see us incorporate the improvements in our
    proposal.  He put some emphasis on increasing our membership and
    visibility in addition to sprucing up the place.  He really likes
    the idea of building an entry structure to set us apart from the
    "tent city" in front of us during the Fair.  Basically, he wants us
    to up our game and be the best we can.  He didn't say it, but we
    think by doing that, we may have a stronger position when time comes
    for our building to come down.  Last spring we were told the horse
    shoe group was being kicked off the grounds.  Not anymore and they
    (the horse shoe folks) are improving their facilities.  Hmm?  Maybe
    there's a message there for us.
11. Bottom line is that we need to get to work and up our game, thus the
    work party info Phil has been sending out.  The Great Train Show is
    March 23-24 and we're all set for that. Let's pull together and run
    trains!!!

      Gary


On 1/31/2019 7:44 PM, Gary Lewis wrote:
> All,
>
> Just a reminder that we have a business meeting tomorrow night, rain 
> or shine.  There are no expected access issues, so please come down 
> and join us.  We had a meeting with Jerome (Fair CEO) and Angel (Fair 
> staff) on Monday and will report how that went.  I won't go into 
> details in this e-mail since it's far easier to do it tomorrow.  
> However, we heard some very positive words about our organization and 
> agreement with what was in the proposal which was submitted in 
> November.  However, the Fair will not agree to any guarantee of time 
> in our building which is really no different than what we've had for 
> several years.  Jerome's predecessor, Rick Pickering, had the same 
> position.  Jerome indicated no organizations have long term agreements 
> with the Fair.  There is no hurry to remove our building or the 
> adjacent maintenance building.  More on that subject tomorrow night.  
> From what we heard, they want us to up our game as outlined in our 
> proposal and increase membership.  More about that tomorrow night.
>
> Gary
>
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