Cup Organizers Want to Add Arts Fest

Hoped-for events surrounding the 1992 America’s Cup sailing regatta include a lavish, multimillion-dollar arts festival similar to last year’s Soviet arts festival and the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles, Cup organizers said Wednesday.

Even before being granted the $10 million in public money the America’s Cup Organizing Committee is seeking from the San Diego Unified Port District--half the group’s operating budget--racing officials outlined a broad series of programs designed to make 1992, in the words of one, a “colossal” year in San Diego.

“In January of ‘92, we hope to have a festival of performance, involving theater and dance,” said Dave McGuigan, vice president in charge of marketing for the organizing committee. “In February, we hope to have a festival of music; in March, a festival of food; in April, a festival of sport, and later, as we near the finals (in May, 1992), a festival of visual art.”

McGuigan and Tom Ehman, head of the organizing committee, said Cup officials have been meeting with representatives of the San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture as well as members of Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s staff. McGuigan said meetings are also planned with officials from the San Diego Symphony and the Old Globe Theatre.

Despite the intense planning, he said, the America’s Cup arts agenda would “in no way” conflict with the triennial city arts festival, already scheduled for the fall of 1992.

Taken together, the two festivals pose almost a full year of international arts activity in San Diego.

McGuigan said the organizing committee hopes its endeavor is “on the magnitude of” the Soviet arts festival and the ’84 Olympic Arts Festival, but distinguished it from the city festival, “which will have as its focus the arts--and just the arts--as opposed to ours, which will offer secondary activities to America’s Cup racing.”

McGuigan and an organizing committee colleague, Peter Litrenta, listed the London Symphony Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic and the Milan Opera, as well as major art exhibits and theatrical companies from around the world, as the types of organizations and events Cup organizers hope to attract.

McGuigan said the reason for the arts festival, as well as other ancillary events, is to give “local people who have no interest in sailing the impression, long after the race has gone, that, indeed, it was a good thing for the city of San Diego.”

Funding, however, will have to come from a public agency--the Port District, which has yet to award the America’s Cup a penny. Ehman, the head of the organizing committee, said at a Wednesday press conference that he has been meeting with officials of the port staff and hopes to appeal “within the next few weeks” to the Board of Port Commissioners for the $10 million.

Port commissioners have voted in principle to assist the organizing committee, but have not promised anything in terms of money. In interviews, several have cited outstanding and costly litigation against the Port District, including lawsuits over pollution in San Diego Bay and jet noise emanating from Lindbergh Field.

Those suits could total hundreds of millions of dollars, which commissioners often cite in counteracting public inquiries about the $40 million a year in port revenues.

Ehman said the $10 million would pay for construction of a media center and an America’s Cup “village,” as well as a museum, and, of course, the arts festival.

Paul Downey, spokesman for Mayor O’Connor, who conceived and promoted the Soviet arts festival, said last year’s event cost $6 million, half of which came from the city’s transient occupancy tax. Downey said the festival “made back” about $2.8 million, meaning the actual expenditure of occupancy-tax money amounted to no more than $200,000.

Cup official Litrenta said a local delegation recently visited Seattle for that city’s Goodwill Games, which included an arts festival. He said Seattle received money from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as the United States Information Agency--funding sources the Cup committee is hoping to tap for its arts festival.

Salvatore Giametta, another member of O’Connor’s staff, who works closely with the San Diego Commission on Arts and Culture, said the San Diego Convention & Visitors’ Bureau and the Greater San Diego Hotel & Motel Assn. recently requested that the city arts festival occur no earlier than the fall, so as not to conflict with America’s Cup events--including its arts festival.

“At this point, it’s highly unlikely that the city festival would be part of any Cup-sponsored event,” Giametta said. “I don’t believe they’d be in competition, though. . . . It may be a matter of semantics when the Cup people use the word festival , because what it sounds like to me is events that would highlight, or represent diversions from, America’s Cup racing, whereas, the city festival would be a celebration only of the arts.”

He said the visitors’ bureau and the hotel and motel group wanted the city festival in the fall “because they’re already assured of a windfall of business in the spring and summer and wanted to do what they could to boost the fall. I think they’re hoping the city festival does that.”

Giametta disputed the notion that San Diego is in danger of a glut of leisure activity in 1992, although he conceded, “An incredible amount is going on.”

The World Cup Equestrian Championships in Rancho Sante Fe and the Baseball All-Star Game at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium are also scheduled for that summer.

“Any way you look at it,” he said, “this will be a hopping town. How will we ever be the same again?”