The Cool Events/Terrain Race scheduled for tomorrow in Kansas City has been cancelled. Racers learned of this when the packet-pickup taking place at The Adams’s Mark Hotel was shut down suddenly. Attendees were told “You will get an email with further details”. Then, this sign was hung up at the hotel.
This afternoon, Obstacle Racing Media spoke with Linda Niendick, County Clerk of Lafayette County, Missouri. Mrs. Niendick told us that Cool Events never applied for the permits necessary to hold an event at that venue. She said “We do all kinds of large and special events. We did not know about this particular event until yesterday morning.”
She went on to tell us “Ordinarily an organizer will contact us to find out about any planning or permits so we can look into zoning, permits, etc. We asked Linda what Cool Events reasoning was and her response was “They said they didn’t know they should.”
Back in July, Cool Events/Terrain Race, received some negative press for cancelling a venue a few days prior to the event. At that event, the the local town’s enforcement department told us they had “bent over backward” to help get this event off the ground. She mentioned Terrain had given them only 3 weeks notice of the event, and “the town had to work fast to get all of the paperwork approved”.
There was also some confusion about where this most recent Missouri event was to take place. The venue Terrain Race began setting up their equipment belonged to a local farmer. However, Cool Events/Terrain listed the physical address as 11618 Highway 24, Lexington,MO,64067. This is the address of Jamz Trucking, which is across the street from the farm. We spoke with someone from Jamz Trucking, who told us”We called Cool Events 6 months ago to remove our address from their website, but they never changed it”
Lucas Pfannenstiel, who is one of the organizers of KC OCR was very upset at the news. Lucas told us that KC OCR had about 200 racers signed up for this event. “I spoke with Brandon Adams from Terrain earlier in the week and he said they were “excited for KCOCR to be here and have our tent set up and that they couldn’t wait to meet us. Guess that won’t happen now. For a small race community we beg OCR companies to come and trust we can produce racers. We held up our end of the deal.”
Obstacle Racing Media has reached out to Cool Events president Bill Spata, as well as their head of PR, Caleb Bacon, but have not received a response.
Shortly before press time, Terrain posted the following:
Terrain Racers,
We’re very sorry to inform you that we have been forced to postpone this Saturday’s Terrain Race Kansas City at River View Farms. Due to unforeseen circumstances beyond our control we are unable to put on the event this Saturday and we will be communicating with you very shortly about the new date. Currently we are working with the venue and city officials on the new date. You can expect to hear from us by early next week.
In addition, today’s Packet Pickup has closed early.
We’re very sorry for the inconvenience and we look forward to bringing you a great event soon.
-The Terrain Race Crew
It appears that Cool Events has had similar issues with this type of permitting issue since at least 2017.
Matt B. Davis
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Absolutely ridiculous
They better refund our money
I fail to see how this is anywhere close to beyond their control. A company that puts on events should know how to put on events. You seriously, didn’t know you need a permit??? Embarrassing.