[dhitchco]

If I was really rich, I'd do the following simply because FIRST is such a huge great program.

I'd establish regional FIRST centers. Each facility would be a year-round permanent place with one common warehouse space for a playing field and 10-20 mini-shops off to the side for each team!

Each team would register annually (maybe a lottery) for their workspace which would be accessible from outside the building (separately keyed for team secrecy).
Each team would have to provide their own insurance, but the physical space, utilities, etc would be provided free of charge or some nominal fee.

Then, each team could reserve the central arena for practice either on a "private" hourly basis or on a shared scrimmage basis.

Ohhhh...if I was really rich! In the mean time, I guess that teams in a given region could pool their resources to buy some scrap carpeting, build a sharable practice field, maybe even design their own 6-team controllers......ah, the beauty of being graciously professional.