Community for a Better Altamont - Citizen's Group Working to Make a Better Altamont!

Gimme Shelter
Neighbors of the Altamont Motorsports Park say their criticism of the track has earned them harassment and death threats. (Originally printed in EastBay Express) - By Corinne Reilly - October 24, 2007

The towering stadium lights strategically turned to set Mark and Karin Rivard's bedroom aglow, sometimes as late as 2 a.m., were pretty bad. Even worse was the time that a stark naked Mark stepped out of the tub and locked eyes with the giggling passengers of a helicopter hovering outside his second-story bathroom window. But the YouTube video accusing Karin of bestowing herpes on an Alameda County supervisor sympathetic to her family's plight — that cut the deepest.

And that's just the short list of punishments the Rivards say they have endured in return for meddling in the business of their new neighbor, the Altamont Motorsports Park.

The Rivards and their two daughters live in a tall, industrial-style house nestled among the white windmills of the Altamont Pass. They designed the three-bedroom, 4,500-square foot home themselves, carefully selecting its high ceilings, concrete and metallic flooring and walls, and vast, open rooms. They imagined they'd spend the rest of their lives there. And yet, 120 feet from the Rivard's property line and 1,000 feet from their front door sits the Altamont Motorsports Park, a paved, half-mile oval racetrack on 83 acres. From their driveway, the Rivards can see the entire track below...

Steve Cameron: Condren caught sitting on his last limb

(Originally printed in the Merced SunStar)
By Steve Cameron - February 16, 2008

Hear that roaring, ripping noise?

Sorry, race fans.

That racket won't be the sound of cars revving up at Riverside Motorsports Park.

It's actually a buzz-saw, hacking through the last limb where John Condren and his remaining band of suckers are perched.

I've been saying and writing for well over a year that Condren's bizarre plan for a quarter-billion dollar racing complex has been nonsense right from the start.

If we give Condren the benefit of the doubt -- which his background as a failed cut-and-run entrepreneur doesn't deserve -- then maybe this was just a ridiculous plan gone wrong.

If we don't, then it's been a sham all along, a scheme for bilking some honest racing investors with lovely dreams -- designed to obtain enough permits and publicity to sell the whole bag of dirt for a profit.

Condren has never, ever told the whole truth -- perhaps to anybody...