LeMans Indoor Karting To Open Greenville, SC Track
Posted by Tom on 10/21/2013
Construction on LeMans Indoor Karting & Meeting Center is going full speed. The facility, at 1524 Roper Mountain Road in Greenville, is the former location of No Name Skate Park.

LeMans, a West Coast company, is expanding eastward and has chosen Greenville through a partnership with Lockheed engineer Don Ausmus, who was transferred here from California. Ausmus said the Indoor Karting & Meeting Center’s location was chosen because Greenville is between Atlanta and Charlotte and is an “auto-centric” environment of the Upstate with the presence of Michelin and BMW.

The facility features a fleet of high-performance Italian go-carts. Drivers must wear protective gear because carts go 40 miles per hour. The track will be open to ages 11 and up, but drivers under the age of 16 will have to take classes to learn how to safely operate the go-carts and the rules of the track, said Ausmus.

In addition to catering to families, LeMans hopes to emulate the model that worked on the West Coast by targeting the business community. In California, the company hosts many corporate events, specifically team-building events that allow departments that would not otherwise interact with each other to come together, said Ausmus. “Since we let the business community around the area know we are here, we have already had inquiries about Christmas parties,” he said.

However, the space has had to undergo a full transformation to make it into LeMans Indoor Karting & Meeting Center, said Ausmus. The ramps that were in place from No Name Skate Park have been torn down, the wall that separated the lobby from the skating area was knocked out and is being redeveloped, and the only thing LeMans has kept in place is the swimming pool to “keep the heritage alive” from its days as the skate park.

In addition to physical changes, Ausmus had to address ways to pump the go-carts’ exhaust out of the enclosed facility. “We had to have a ventilation study done and change the ventilation by increasing the exhaust fans to increase flow rate of exiting exhaust,” he said.

LeMans Indoor Karting & Meeting Center will feature 2,000 square feet of meeting space, 1,000-square-foot balcony, a 2,500-square-foot lobby, and 30,000 square feet of track when it is completed. At this point, Ausmus and LeMans in California are working out pricing for each user on the track, which they hope to open later this month