Bernie and Wayne where invited to assist Stuart Sobek, the Founder of the upcoming Las Vegas Concours d' Elegeance and Vance Walker,  the LVCE Managing Director, in some of the planning and logistics for their first time event.  Sometimes getting an experienced set of eyes on a new event is a good idea and the guys in Las Vegas have all the trappings needed to host a truly stellar concours.

Before we delve into the details, there's a few things you should know like when is it and what is the story behind the cool art deco logo.

The Helene Award will be presented each year to deserving innovators in the automotive industry for outstanding achievements in the design, development and future of the automobile.

The Concours happens on  Saturday, October 26, 2019, from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm  at the Dragon Ridge Country Club. which is about a 20 minute drive from the Bellagio host hotel for the Concours events.

Much of our time was helping develop the field layout, shuttle stops locations, trailer parking locations and discussing how to plan for traffic flow and staging.

Dragon Ridge Country Club has a bit of a Scottish Highlands feel to it.  It's located in the MacDonald Highlands, which are a series of highly affluent residential neighborhoods in Henderson, Nevada in the foothills of Black Mountain. The neighborhood is part of the Las Vegas Valley and it sits on the edges of the McCullough Mountains and overlooks much of Henderson and Greater Las Vegas including the Las Vegas Strip.

Dragonridge Country Club is one of the highest points of Greater Las Vegas. Guard-gated, it is  more than 170 acres of rolling hills overlooking the Las Vegas skyline. It's quite a sight to behold and promises to be an amazing location for a Concours.

Take a peek at the slideshow below and check out some of the initial planning that is being worked on!

By Bernard Martin

When Wayne and I started this Concours LLC endeavor, we agreed on several groundrules:

• Any event we product has to be fun for those attending
• Any event we produce has to be profitable for our vendors and sponsors
• Any event we produce has to be welcoming to the media and bloggers and make them feel part of the team
• Any event we product should appear to happen seamlessly, no matter how complex the logistics are behind the scenes. 
  

When we get emails, like this one from Ford Heacock below, and phone calls from some folks we highly respect, and see very kind things written in articles about our events, we know that that the six hours of planning was more important than the six minute solution we could have tossed in and hoped for the best.

At our events we operate on keeping everything simple.  It's called K.I.S.S. by most. We don't ask a volunteer or judge to do anything more than a couple things that they can check off on the fingers of one hand. Otherwise people will  forget things if its too complicated.  This especially holds true for any first year event: You don't know what you don't know. 

At the end of the day, it really takes a team of great people to make a succesful event.  It takes every person on the team jumping in to lend a hand. 

We certainly had an "all hands on deck" moment last May.  We experienced the second highest amount of rainfall since the "1000 Year Flood" that closed the Greenbrier for a few months after the June 2016 high water mark destroyed so much of the facility.

We had watched the weather closely on Saturday and decided that we should be clear of rain during the Concours on Sunday.  We made the call at 2pm on Saturday afternoon. We would not need to implement our "rain plan" that would have required moving cars into the building by late Saturday afternoon.

Sunday was indeed beautiful, albeit slightly overcast, with only a few raindrops at the beginning of the Concours. Perfect weather for the photographers actually. What we had failed to pay close attention to was the severe amount of overnight rain.  I recall Wayne calling me as I was finishing some showfield marking about 10pm at night on Saturday.  The rain was coming down in buckets.  As I walked back to the golf cart for the last time, I told him we where finally ready for tomorrow and I was not going to make it to the Gala but was going to take a hot shower, have a glass of wine and get some sleep.

We could still handle that easily and but needed to take care of the other half of of the showfield classes.

We still needed a place to put five more judged classes.  Fortunately, the golf pro suggested the idea of putting cars in front of the main entrance to The Greenbrier.  We where very fortunate to have originally planned to use the front entrance for our show.  We pulled out and dusted off the very original plans that called for putting some iconic 20-30's era cars right in the middle of the roundabout and the brass cars under the roof.  We had a plan. We could park all the classes and have a show.

But how do we notify everyone?  It came down to the effort of the judges.  What an incredible group of judges Paul Ianuario assembled.  Each group called their class, told them where to go and when to unload.  The Volunteer hosts who had been to other car shows really pulled out the stops and made if happen.  OODA loops!

It really does take a lot of people to make an event success.  You've got to have a team and a that team you have to trust to do their jobs to the best of their own discretion. 

It's the people that mean alot to us. It's the people that should mean alot to your and your efforts doing a car event.

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Wayne Long is life-long car guy whose love for cars started at the early age of 2. He would accompany his family to the SCCA races to support his Uncle who raced a Bug-eye Sprite and later a Fiat OSCA. As Wayne entered the teenage years he quenched his thirst for competition by racing Motocross.

By the time Wayne finished college, and started working as a Civil Engineer, he had switched from motorcycles to cars and began Autocrossing. Wayne spent 21 years practicing Engineering before he finally got his opportunity to enter the automotive industry. Opening Mid-Atlantic Sports Cars 10 years ago, Wayne and his childhood friends, Rick and David Biafora, chased their dream.

Since becoming a full-time automotive junkie Wayne has become a regular on the national auction circuit buying investment cars for his high-end clients. In addition, Wayne has become a Concours judge supporting events such as the Cortile at the Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix as well as the Hilton Head Concours d’Elegance and he is the Executive Director of the new Greenbrier Concours d’Eleganc

During the 2017 Amelia Island Concours d' Elegance Wayne and Bernie where invited by Paul to spend some time with Roy Sjoberg.

Wayne Long, Founder of the Greenbrier Concours, has selected Paul Ianuario as Chief Judge of the inaugural Concours.

The Greenbrier is proud to host the first annual Concours d'Elegance on September 21-24, 2017. The Greenbrier Concours d'Elegance is honored to welcome Paul Ianuario as Chief Judge of the inaugural Concours, to be held September 21-24, 2017 at The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va.

Ianuario – a retired engineer, who spent more than 40 years in the automotive supplier industry and is a Master CCA judge, as well as an AACA judge – has been instrumental in setting up the Concours classes to make The Greenbrier Concours unique in comparison to any other Concours event around the world. Paul resides in Duncan, S.C., with his wife, Dinky.