Have any of your SCCA regions had trouble finding and keeping venues for your solo events? My region is hurting for a nice place to race. Is there a secret to securing a good location? Have any other regions out there purchased a place to run at?
Can I talk the SCCA into building a road course in our area, like 5 miles from my house? 
It's a delicate dance. You must keep the sites you have happy. That means noise rules. That means making sure participants don't drive like maniacs outside of the venue. That is if you can find a venue that is vacant during your time of need. Doing things to prove your worth is worth the effort. Clean up trash on the lot, even if it isn't yours. Repaint lines that may have been covered with rubber. Sending a thank you letter, with a nice framed picture to the lot owner.
Lot owners don't want to take the risk of hosting these events. So when you find one that is willing, you have to kill them with kindness.
^^ What he said. Then you get deals like we had where some folks sought US out 
with an offer of the use of a Nationals size lot. We ran one last year there, the management was ecstatic and suggested we come back for another 2 day event this year, then they had to declare bankruptcy. The original group were still running the show up till about a week ago, then they were ousted and a temporary team was put in place by the creditors. The bank and consortium which are handling the bankruptcy then said 'no way'. 
It was scheduled for December 6/7 this year, now the site guys are scrambling to find another venue. It's a points event, too.
The SCCA head office actually has a "kit" put together by a recently formed Site Aquisition Committee. It's pretty slick and well done, and explains a bit about the club's insurance, which may help allay liability issues with a prospect. I'm sure if you contact them, they'll send you some to use when scouting new sites.
It's still up to the locals to choose and contact the site owners, but the kit makes for a bit nicer presentation.
Detroit Region has had a bit of a rough time lately with venues... sometimes it was conflicting dates (DTE Energy Music Theatre, and The Palace of Auburn Hills), other times, it was area residents complaints. either way, I think we got all the events in this year, and I think they may have used Belle Isle for one of the events in conjunction with the corvette club of Detroit (maybe)
my club got screwed this year for all our events. the college of lake county i had been the president of the car club i got the windy city maita club 2 years ago here for events, last year nor problem, then this year we have a problem with them putting us in a new lot. the new lot is a double that is split by a grass meadion with trees. in the other lot is where they do motorcyle training. the soccor frieids are down at one end with some good run off room. we do the drivers scool on sat and sunday we have a event. the week after that the scool tells us we cant do anything. we are not sure if the soccor moms or the bloody cycles that got us booted. then in oct we have the same lots ready for a car show and times submitted and everything. out student adviser has to get on the phone with the head os capus safety and sevral others in the college(all this on a sat afternoon.) and then gets to get the lot we needed, but we had to wait for the damn cycle thing to get down first and they took there own damn time to do anything......sigh.... the past year os so i have been in the car club, just not as the president. its just annoying that i go though a lot of effort sevral years ago to do what was needed and then the current pres does the same thing and we get screwed sev times this year....
sorry, dont ranting know....
So it's tough to find venues all over. There is an old airforce base here with plenty of room for an event, but its use has been out of the question the past few years.
A track could bring a lot of money into our area. Maybe I could talk the city council into building one. Who am I kidding.
any airfield that the faa has control over usually is a major pita.
Usually old military airfield revert to faa control.
Up here, the state police used an unused runway for training. FAA kicked them out. They are now building a new site(hoping to get in there for autox).
Rallyx sites can be fun to get sometimes as well.
we usually don't have any trouble getting rallycross sites...our last event had 50+ people, so we get alot of recognition in this area. our Rallycross programs is AWESOME.
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