Donal Gooch stands in his arena and counts the garbage. Hundreds of crushed Modelo cans, broken plates, and discarded cups carpet the floor of the Gooch Sports Arena in Eagle Rock, North Carolina. For most people, this would signal a mess. For Donal, it signals money.
The more trash, the more tickets sold. The less trash, the smaller the crowd. On a recent morning after a concert featuring a touring Mexican band, Donal surveyed the relatively sparse debris and grimaced. "Shit, it's pitiful," he said. Not enough people meant not enough profit.
The 69-year-old has built something unexpected on his family's 12-acre plot in an unincorporated community just 15 miles from Raleigh. What began as private parties and horse races on land his family acquired in 1944 has transformed into one of the region's most prominent venues for Mexican concert promoters, norteño bands, and Mexican rodeo events. The Gooch Sports Arena, alongside a quarter-horse racetrack and family home, now draws crowds that can exceed 5,500 people per show, each ticket priced north of $70. Gas stations run out of fuel. Hotels fill up. Local workers cash in.
Donal inherited a piece of rural southern Black culture built on horseback and community gathering. He's monetized it by tapping into one of the fastest-growing populations in the nation. North Carolina's Latino population exploded from 76,000 in 1990 to more than 1.1 million by 2020. The state itself ranks as the nation's third fastest-growing, with much of that expansion concentrated in the Research Triangle region where Eagle Rock sits on the periphery.
The transformation began in 2003 when Donal met Cuco, a concert promoter who had immigrated to North Carolina from Mexico as a teenager. Cuco initially doubted Donal's pitch. "I don't think he's got shit," Cuco reportedly told his partner. But when he saw the land, he saw opportunity. Together they launched events featuring coleadero, a Mexican rodeo tradition where vaqueros attempt to lasso bulls by their tails, followed by concerts under the Carolina sun. Eventually, Donal built the arena itself to provide shade and weather protection.
Touring bands now arrive from Michoacán, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, and other Mexican states. Cumbia, mariachi, norteño, and banda music fill the speakers. The events cost between $180,000 and $300,000 to produce, with security alone running over $25,000 per show.
Daniel Ponce, Cuco's 38-year-old nephew and co-worker, describes the concerts as essential community release valves. Workers who endure 45- to 60-hour weeks need somewhere to blow off steam. He views the arena as a "de-stressor" for the growing Latino workforce transforming the region. "He might be African American," Ponce said of Donal, "but I think everybody that comes in this place just sees him as another Mexican."
But the landscape is shifting rapidly, and not all changes benefit the business. ICE arrests in North Carolina doubled in 2025. Touring Mexican bands have struggled to secure visas, with some having their existing visas revoked. Those bands still able to tour have raised their rates, pushing ticket prices higher. Ponce recently canceled a South Carolina concert due to immigration concerns. "We're not gonna penalize somebody or force somebody to come out when they're afraid," he said.
The economic pressures extend beyond immigration enforcement. Rising gas costs, inflation, and international instability are all weighing on the operation. Yet Ponce maintains a punishing schedule, spending more than 45 weekends per year on the road managing events.
Donal's vision for the arena has proven so successful that he now attends national Mexican concert promoter conferences, where he stands out as one of the few Black people in the room. Promoters jockey for his attention, competing to secure bookings at his venue.
Parallel to her father's business ambitions, Donal's 33-year-old daughter Caitlin is pursuing a different path on the same land. She's building something centered on horses and education rather than spectacle and ticket sales. Caitlin grew up riding over neighboring farms and woods, much of it owned by distant relatives. She has leveraged that childhood into a modest media presence, appearing on Good Morning America, CNN, and in the Washington Post and Vogue. Her nonprofit, Saddle Up and Read, uses miniature horses to help children develop literacy skills.
Unlike her father's lucrative enterprise, Caitlin's work provides no financial security. She landscapes on the side and previously drove for Uber. When the farm floods or the Saddle Up and Read truck breaks down, she crowdfunds repairs. She runs a local 4-H club. She operates year-round with a summer equestrian camp teaching the basics of horse care. Her focus is on participation and education, "not just having a good time."
Both are fighting to preserve their family's legacy as the region transforms around them. The same growth that created opportunity for Donal's concert business has brought subdivision development, new zoning restrictions, and a loss of open space. Wendell Falls, a 1,100-acre subdivision developed by Japanese and Canadian real-estate companies, broke ground nearby in 2022. The town of Wendell now exercises extraterritorial jurisdiction over the Gooch property, dictating that concerts can only occur on Saturdays between 1 p.m. and 11:30 p.m., with off-duty law enforcement required at all events.
"They can tell us what to do," Donal says bluntly. "We don't have no jurisdiction, we don't have no vote, no nothing in the city of Wendell."
Caitlin has become an advocate for rural communities facing development pressure. She now attends town halls across eastern Wake County and encourages her online following to do the same. Half-built houses with exposed framing sit just a three-minute walk from her back steps. Newcomers to Wendell sometimes express surprise hearing concert crowds from the outdoor arena during warmer months.
The loss extends beyond zoning and regulation. Dense southern forest that once connected the family's land to relatives' property has been replaced by asphalted roads, subdivisions, and empty lots. Caitlin's cousin, 68-year-old Annette Holman, recalls childhood summers when extended family roamed freely across communal woods and shared trails. That intergenerational space, which created a tight-knit Black community insulated from the harsher outside world, is largely gone.
What remains is the determination of two generations using the same 12 acres in radically different ways. Donal chases dollars and cultural commerce. Caitlin pursues connection and education. Both are racing against suburbanization, immigration enforcement, and economic pressure. The Gooch family's land, once the fringe of a rural region, has become a peculiar cultural landmark at the edge of an expanding metropolitan area, serving both a historic Black community and a rapidly growing Latino population while facing threats from all sides.
Author James Rodriguez: "In a region transforming at warp speed, the Gooch arena represents something rare: a family business that genuinely serves its community while resisting the developer's bulldozer, even as that bulldozer inches closer every year."
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