“Our family has been operating on this property for six generations. It’s been in our family for over 100 years. The motorsports business has been here since 1940 and we’ve been in the golf business here since 1947. 

We’ve had our ups and downs over the years but now we have a product that people know and trust. Where I’ve seen Thompson change is the demographic has shifted. It’s become more of a bedroom community to the greater metros and now, because more people can work from home, we’ve seen them spending more time with leisure activities. It’s a very nice place to live if you like a quiet life and want easy access to other places. For us, we’re seeing the population grow here. We’re seeing more traffic and more new faces. Situated in this corner of the state, Thompson gives you access to other areas with a large population. 

So, I think where the opportunity lies is that Thompson is not like some of these other land-locked communities in Connecticut. Here, you’re right on the highway and you can get to Auburn or Worcester in 30 minutes and to Boston, Hartford or Providence in an hour. Thompson has the accessibility and the leisure market population has grown around us here. However, it’s a place that hasn’t been completely found yet for business development. The good news is it’s a centralized location and you don’t have to go build the infrastructure to get to it. 

For us, being in the leisure market, we’ve worked really hard at offering people a really good product that’s still affordable, even in today’s inflationary environment. We saw the shift coming in our motorsports customer demand years ago. That’s why we invested in rebuilding the road racing facility in 2013. Now, we’re operating the entire facility six days a week on average from late March to early December, including events and rental agreements that attract groups from all over the northeast. 

We are a large local employer and employment for years was a challenge. Post-pandemic, we’ve seen more available workforce around us, including more young people and higher-quality, full-time employment obtainable. The economy for us has been strong, especially for golf.”