Halifax County hits the Big Time!

Remain calm. All is well. Planning for only 7000 people has been handled. They got this. Yes, it’s ridiculous.

Motels, restaurants prepare for influx of race fans

In typical Gazette-Virginian policy, the headline has little to do with the story. You’ll find the hotels mentioned two-thirds down in the story and absolutely nothing about the restaurants. But anyway…

If you let this article scare you a little, you’d have hidden in your house Thursday night as Halifax County was going to be invaded by a massive crowd of people. I am amused by the overhyping of this non-problem that is a great economic problem to have. Emergency management calls it an “incident of significance or event of significance”. I prefer “incident” because that makes it sound much more scary.

So they were expecting 6500 people at the racetrack/fairgrounds area for one day. I’m not the only one who thinks the mass exit after the race is over wouldn’t be much worse than Friday/Saturday night at the county fair, the Heritage Festival, or the Lopefest. And regarding the “increase of traffic”.. oh come on. Route 360 at the racetrack is a four lane divided highway. And by making all the traffic head east when leaving the racetrack, you’ve just created a bigger safety hazard with everybody U-turning back westbound at Runt’s Store. In other words, have a few extra cops directing traffic with plenty of orange cones and this “incident of significance” pretty much solves itself with an hour. Now that I’ve seen the semi-hysteria over 6500 people and a one-night show, I’m scared to think of what would happen in Halifax County if a genuine “Big Event” ever happens.

Now let’s just to the article’s mention of the extreme shortage of hotel rooms. That’s another NothingBurger from the Gazette-Virginian article which offered this piece of business commentary …

Area motels and hotels are seeing an increase in business presumably due to race fans coming to town for the race.

That’s from reporter Doug Ford, economic analyst & expert. One out of six surveyed hotels was sold out, so let’s jump to a conclusion totally unsupported by any facts. I’m sure we’ll get to the restaurant impact part of this article soon. And by soon, I mean never.

By the way, the South Boston Speedway team pulled this event off without any major hitches. It seems that the extra traffic control should have been deployed in Turn #1 on the racetrack. The extra law enforcement presence would have been better utilized in the infield to break up the arguments between race teams. In other words, just a typical South Boston Speedway race night.

Congratulations to Cathy Rice and everybody involved in putting Halifax County in the news for Thursday night’s race. You did good, folks.