Harley-Davidson event should
have been handled differently
The debacle created by the Harley-Davidson 100th Anniversary Celebration Tour at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park could have — and should have — been avoided.
Since it first became a public topic, the proposed August event has been hotly debated in Old Bridge and surrounding communities. But the fuss could have been eliminated had the local governing body asked better questions early on, and had the racetrack and motorcycle company representatives given the right answers the first time around.
Now, after nearly five months of back-and-forth debate and public outcry, representatives of Old Bridge Township Raceway Park and the Harley-Davidson Motor Co. — sensing that public officials really did not want the motorcycle rally in town particularly in light of publicized biker gang rumbles in New York and Nevada — withdrew their application to host the birthday party.
Even without the reported violent incidents, however, from Dec. 17 — when township police Capt. William Cerra first presented Raceway Park’s application to host the event — there have been cases of misunderstandings and second-guessing.
Cerra, in a telephone interview, has said that he presented the application in order to show that the police department sanctioned the event, which would have drawn more than 150,000 patrons to the racetrack over three days.
Ken Landerman, general manager for Raceway Park, has also stated that he wanted to get a council decision before the end of the year, so that his business and Harley-Davidson representatives could have been laying the groundwork.
Having Cerra’s stamp of approval was a means of persuading the council that the police could handle any situation that arose, Landerman said.
After the new year, however, other details came out. It turns out Harley-Davidson wanted to sell 50,000 tickets a day, not 40,000 as they had previously told Cerra. Even Raceway Park’s attorney, Jonathan Heilbrunn, admitted that Harley-Davidson made a mistake in their crowd expectations.
Then there was the information that the venue would feature the Eagles in concert, as well as appearances by well-known comedians.
Now, according to Landerman, those were only suggestions of the caliber of entertainment that could be coming.
Still, that was just one more in a series of unfortunate and preventable misunderstandings.
As it stands, it looks like the council rushed to judgment in December and approved the event in December without enough information.
For that, there’s blame enough for both sides — the council for acting hastily, Harley-Davidson for providing less than complete preliminary information.
Trouble is, it’s now probably too late for the company to reschedule the event somewhere else, and the council looks like it can’t make up its mind.
Hopefully, there’s a lesson to be learned all around.
Next time, the council should get the straight story from the movers and shakers themselves before making a hasty decision — not secondhand through a township employee. And next time, maybe the entity requesting the event will come forward with a more professional proposal at the outset.
That way, everyone is saved trouble, and local residents might have an enjoyable summer event to look forward to.