While so many of the “lost” facilities that fans pine about are in a state of disrepair after years of sitting fallow, The Milwaukee Mile never suffered the same fate. As part of the state-owned Wisconsin State Fair Park, the track was fully maintained despite not hosting major racing events.
“We look at a lot of factors when we consider bringing an event to a facility,” McKarns stated. “Has the track been kept up, is it ready to compete on? We really weren’t that concerned Milwaukee hadn’t hosted a large event in a few years because of the maintenance program in place there. We also look at a number of other factors such as how many race teams we can draw from that area and what their travel time to the track is.
“Finally, we’ll look at how many fans there are in a large radius area and what the population of that area is,” he added. “All of that goes into planning a successful event and The Milwaukee Mile delivers all that criteria.”
The group tackled the task of publicizing last year’s event with the same shoe-leather style of marketing campaign that McKarns employed when he launched the street drag concept a year earlier.
“We did all of the new internet and social media we could do, but we also visited every auto parts store, car dealership, repair shops, anything that had to do with automotive,” said McKarns. “We’d ask if we could hang up a poster and maybe have a minute or two to discuss what we were doing with the owner or the person behind the counter. We even stopped in a couple of bars, hung up some posters and sampled a few of their beers.”
“The biggest hurdle is getting the word out,” agreed Sargent. “When you have an event at a venue that hasn’t had a major event in several years, you have to reinvigorate the message to area race fans. Getting your message out to the teams and drivers is much easier than it is getting it to the public whether it is the die-hard fans, casual fans or those people who aren’t fans. All three groups are important and connecting with them all is a big task.”
With the street drag program solidly in place with another slate of five Tuesday night events, all parties are now focused on growing the second-annual oval track race. They are hoping for better weather, more fans and a full pit area as a new group of competitors try to join Austin Nason (ARCA Midwest Tour), Levon Van Der Geest (Midwest Truck Series), Ron Weyer (Mid-American Stock Car) and Woody Pool (Upper Midwest Vintage Series) on the track’s distinguished list of winners.
“We worked through a lot of different logistical issues last year and thought all the groups handled it well,” said McKarns. “It was a solid group effort by a lot of people working toward a common goal. It’s important for our state and region to have racing at The Milwaukee Mile.
“Regardless of what kind of racing it is, it is important to be up and running again,” he added. “That fact that the track didn’t have big racing events for nearly five years was an open wound to a lot of race fans, not just here in Wisconsin, but for fans everywhere. It was good to help heal that a little.
“This year, we hope to build on some things we learned last year, how to better market and run the event,” McKarns continued. “Hopefully, the support we had last year will continue to grow and down the road, we can have more racing again at ‘The Mile.’ It doesn’t matter if our group is the one to promote it or not.
“If other people see there are some successful things going on there, maybe they will step in and promote other events in addition to whatever we’re doing. We want good things to happen in motorsports in West Allis again,” he noted. “In the bigger picture, that’s what we want. If our efforts now help make that a reality, that’s good for everyone.”
A Saturday, June 13, practice day is scheduled to get this year’s event at The Milwaukee Mile underway with a street drag program to follow that evening. Final practice, qualifying, preliminary events and feature races in all divisions will take the green flag at 1 p.m. on Sunday, June 14.