Paul Post
By Paul Post
Drivers, start your engines!
Former professional race car driver Jeremy Treadway has just the thing for people who feel the need for speed.
Cars buzzing around an indoor quarter-mile track are one of many fun offerings at ADK Karting Experience, a huge new entertainment complex at Aviation Mall’s former Sears store site. Visitors may also test their skills on racing simulators, play glow-in-the-dark miniature golf or choose from a wide variety of challenging arcade games.
“It’s this end of the building that needed help, needed to be revitalized,” said the 46-year-old Treadway, a Ticonderoga native. “We’re excited. The traffic flow is going to be huge. It’s good for the mall, it’s great for Queensbury.”
He started racing in Karts, at age 12, and won a world championship in Ireland a year later. “From there we kind of spiked up through the ranks,” he said. “When I was 15 I was too young to race in the United States because it had a law that you had to be 18 at the time. So I raced in Canada.”
“Sports Car Club of America changed their age limit to 16 because of me and started a program called First Gear,” Treadway said.
Over the next 18 years, he owned his own team was also paid to drive for others, everything from GT cars to Indy light cars, which are used to develop IndyCar drivers. He once placed fourth in a Watkins Glens NASCAR race, also competed at Lime Rock Park and test drove a full-fledged IndyCar for the former KOOL Green team in Las Vegas.
At ADK Karting, people of all ages can share his passion for racing.
The attraction is open to individuals, but plans call for establishing competitive leagues for both karts and simulators, which replicate some of the world’s most famous race tracks.
ADK Karting’s long, main track is for teens and adults. A separate shorter one, with small cars, is for young children.
“What’s unique about us here is that we can actually turn the track backwards and also join it to the kids’ track to make it one big track,” Treadway said. “It can run counter-clockwise, which gives you a completely different feel. It’s awesome.”
All guests are required to watch a brief safety video and are outfitted with a balaclava and helmet before hopping in one of the electric-powered cars.
The track, designed and built by 360 Karting of Slovenia, is set up as a flat road course with left- and right-turns and straightaways, allowing cars to travel up to 50 mph. It’s wide enough that cars can pass one another. A special coating on the concrete surface promotes traction, stability and safety.
Cars come from a Bulgarian firm and are significantly different from those found at outdoor summertime go-kart attractions.
ADK Karting has already created more than 30 jobs and more are expected when a café and bar area, allowing fans to sit and watch races, opens in the near future.
The 80,000-square-foot former Sears store, near the mall’s Food Court, closed in 2018 and had been vacant ever since, with the exception of a seasonal Spirt of Halloween business.
One of ADK Karting’s first customers, Melissa Ives of Glens Falls, couldn’t believe the transformation. “It’s absolutely amazing,” she said. “I never expected it to look like this when I walked in the building. It was awesome, the staff was very helpful. I was nervous because I’m a slow driver, but they were helpful in getting me in the kart and getting it moving. I felt very safe.”
“I’m going to let my kids go by themselves next time so they can go a little faster and not worry about hitting mom,” she joked.
The colorful mini-golf layout has a 1980s video game theme.
Arcade games run the gamut from corn hole, hoop shoot and Skee-ball to electronic types that test your skill at shooting aliens.
Treadway said he learned about such amusements “by traveling to a lot to different operations to find out what is unique and does the public like that? How do we get them to do it?”
He now lives in Fort Ann where several years ago he converted the former Country Meadows Golf Course to ADK MX, a seasonal motocross facility open during the summer months, on Route 149.
ADK Karting will be open year-round. It affords fun, indoor entertainment in winter and Treadway also hopes to get considerable business from Lake George area tourists.