Race Promoter 'Blends' Into Golf Industry

Jan. 2000

After a highly successful 41-year career promoting stock car racing in the Minnesota-North Dakota area, Jim Corcoran's entry into the peat business as wasn't quite so glorious.

But, it was the start of something good for all concerned.

Corcoran, a lifelong resident of Grand Forks, N.D., had gotten into racing shortly after returning from a stint in the Navy during World War II. At first, while he worked in the tire and service station business and later in sales, racing was just a hobby. Through the years, it became steadily bigger and better and in 1963 he bought the Grand Forks Speedway. By 1968, race promotion became a fulltime opportunity and he quit his job as sales supervisor for Old Dutch Foods.

The business quickly spread beyond that Grand Forks track. At one time, Corcoran, who became known as "Mr. Racing," owned, operated or leased 27 different tracks in the two-state region. "I had three brothers, a nephew and some cousins who drove, but I never did. All I did was promote racing," Corcoran says.

It was after he retired from racing that Corcoran bought a peat field in northwestern Minnesota with the idea of getting into that business. In his first year of operation, he was able to get some peat made up before the whole area washed out when about 20 inches of rain fell during the month of June.

"I was lucky that I had some peat made up," he says. "The guys from Dakota Peat weren't so lucky. They had deposits right next door to my field and they were washed out before they could get any peat ready. I ended up selling all of my peat to them. In fact, I sold the whole operation to them and they gave me a job."

That job soon developed into Corcoran's serving as the operator and supervising consultant of Dakota's custom soil blending service. Accompanied by his wife, Ila, he traveled to blending jobs all over the country for the next four and a half years.

"It worked well for Ila, too, because she would stop off at one of our daughters (in Madison, Wis., Oklahoma City or Amarillo, Tex), while I did jobs in those areas. I operated the No. 1 2250 machine from the beginning...It was the first Hydro Blender that Dakota built," he says. "I pulled it all over the country behind a one-ton pickup and did blending for a number of the top golf courses and athletic fields until retiring a second time in 1999."

Some of those better known athletic fields where Corcoran did the blending include Lambeau Field in Green Bay, the fields used by the Kansas City Royals and Chiefs, along with those used by the Carolina Panthers, Tennessee Titans, Oregon Ducks and others. Top golf courses that Corcoran has range from North and South Carolina, and from New York and New Hampshire on the east Coast to Texas and Oklahoma in the south, and Arizona and California in the Southwest.

"Michigan and Maine are the only two states that I haven't been in," Corcoran says. "When I wasn't blending, I was demo-ing the machine. We ran equipment all over the country...went to trade shows in Orlando, Dallas, New Orleans, Las Angeles, Las Vegas and Chicago."

Corcoran, who will be 74 in March (2001), came out of retirement again last summer (June 2000) at the request of Dakota Peat president Mike Pierce. "I was in Wisconsin when Mike called and said Dakota needed me to do the blending for the new Arnold Palmer-design golf course that was being built in Grand Forks," Corcoron says. "That was in early June and I came back again in September for another month to complete the job."

The first nine holes of the new course, which replaces a course severely damaged by the 1997 flood, are expected to be open for play next summer with the full course ready by fall.

"This job has been fun. I enjoy talking and working with people," Corcoran says. As a result, his friendships in the golf course and athletic field industry are many. And his stories are many, like the one about when he first met George Toma in Kansas City. Toma, who was head groundskeeper for the Kansas City fields, now inspects all Super Bowl fields for the NFL.

"He's one of the finest people I've ever met," Corcoran says of the accomplished groundskeeper. "I remember the first time I met him. We were to blend for the Kansas City Royals field. Everything was torn up but I still drove into the ballpark, right onto the field in my pickup. After I introduced myself, George told me, 'If it wasn't for those North Dakota plates, you'd have never made it in here.' We've become good friends.

"I've enjoyed business...don't want to quit. When I was in racing, I worked with thousands of young people and nothing thrills me more now than for one of them to call me and want to have coffee. And, in all the towns that I ran races, I can say that I never left an unpaid bill or any ill feeling. It's been that way in the blending business, too."