America’s Cup Sails Into a Sea of Apathy

The London Telegraph recently characterized the America’s Cup sailing regatta, the finals of which began here Saturday, as being awash in a “sea of troubles.” It described the grandeur of the world’s oldest regatta as “floundering in a sea of apathy.”

The most tangible effect of the race, the newspaper said, is that hundreds of people “will lose millions of dollars.” And so far, no spin doctor has surfaced who can put a happy face on what many local residents are calling a boondoggle.

Back when multimillionaire businessman and sailing enthusiast Malin Burnham approached the San Diego Unified Port District asking for $20 million in public money to fund the regatta, he equated it with the World Cup soccer championships and the Summer Olympics.

But two years later, with the finals officially under way, Bill Koch--the head of the America 3 syndicate, which is representing the United States in its defense against Il Moro di Venezia of Italy--described the local reaction by concluding flatly:

“San Diego is yawning at the America’s Cup.”

Reasons given for the underwhelming response include: the national recession and its devastating impact on Southern California; the fact that San Diego, the nation’s sixth-largest city, is the first metropolitan area to stage the event, and lack of any focus.

In every other America’s Cup setting, the syndicates of various countries set up shop in close proximity, their flags fluttering beside one another, as if in a United Nations of sailing.

But here, where the wealthy syndicates protected their compounds with the fervor of the former Kremlin, headquarters were scattered from Coronado to Mission Bay, more than 10 miles to the north.

Russia was supposed to have an entry, but two syndicates ended up feuding with one another, and the hull that was flown from St. Petersburg almost ended up in a local landfill before a hobbyist bought it for $1--a fitting symbol, some say, of everything this boat race has become.

At first, the America’s Cup, which has originated in such places as Newport, R.I., and Fremantle, Australia, was forecast to pack an economic wallop for a city that desperately needs it.

A study conducted by economists at the University of San Diego assessed the potential impact as being about $1 billion, a figure that has been reduced by tourism consultant Robert Rauch to as low as $430 million, with some people wondering if it can come anywhere close to that.

Board of Port Commissioners member Lynn Schenk remembers the day Burnham and his coalition of promoters came before the commission asking for the $20 million that some members seemed eager to provide.

“They wanted funding for an America’s Cup float in the Pasadena Rose Parade,” Schenk said, incredulously. “They wanted money so that the spouses of (race) judges and other executives could travel along, too. I don’t even know of large corporations that pay for the spouses to travel.

“They even had a line item in there demanding that the cup itself be flown in a first-class seat! How would the cup know it was flying first-class? Couldn’t it at least fly coach? I got the feeling that the people putting this together didn’t have high regard for the public nature of port funds.”

The San Diego Unified Port District gave the America’s Cup Organizing Committee about $8 million. As it turned out, the fears of Schenk and other commissioners were but a sneak preview of what became a litany of problems for the organizers and the event itself.

As the finals drew near, and Stars & Stripes, the boat skippered by hometown hero Dennis Conner, was losing to Koch and America 3 , fears grew more intense.

It got so bad in early April that San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor pleaded with residents to invite out-of-town friends and relatives to come see the races or else have the city endure economic peril.

More than a year ago, one local hotel executive booked a group of cancer doctors, nurses and researchers rather than waiting to see if Cup business developed. This week, only a few of his 1,300 rooms are being booked by Cup tourists.

Michael Fischer, director of marketing for Le Meridien in Coronado, said his hotel, like many in San Diego County, paid $50,000 for the right to be an “official sponsor.” After being booked solid with reservations for May, Fischer now sees a drastically different ledger.

“We’re finding ourselves wide open,” he said, and posed a question on the lips of many San Diegans.

“What if we win ?” he said. “What if America 3 wins, and we have to have this thing in San Diego again? How are we going to approach it (three) years from now? For me, that’s the million-dollar question.”

Not everyone is unhappy. Positive reports do exist, although the balance sheet as a whole is fairly gloomy. Coronado merchant John Sawicki, who built his own America’s Cup village and named it the Kiwinado in honor of New Zealand, said he lost $250,000.

Sawicki said toilet paper and paper plate manufacturers, caterers and apartment managers have “exceeded their wildest dreams” and that Sir Michael Fay, the head of the New Zealand challenge, spent more than $25,000 a day maintaining a crew in Coronado.

Koch of America 3 estimates having spent $64 million of his own money, and much of that made its way into the local economy. Raul Gardini, head of the Italian challenge and a member of the famously wealthy Ferruzi family, also spent freely.

Ed Davis, manager of the Oakwood Apartments in Coronado, where many of the 190 New Zealand crew members stayed for the last year and a half, said Fay’s Kiwi contingent brought the Oakwood more than $70,000 a month in guaranteed rent.

“We love it, we love it, we love it,” Davis said. “You can Cup us to death as far as we’re concerned.”

Davis says restaurants, particularly in Coronado, did “extremely well,” but other restaurateurs, citing huge expectations, see the Cup largely in terms of disappointment and failure.

Radio station XTRA-AM sportscaster Lee (Hacksaw) Hamilton, host of the city’s most popular sports talk show, offers some hard evidence about the reaction of local fans, who are eagerly awaiting baseball’s All-Star game in July but who have shown little interest in the Cup.

“I take, on the average, 60 calls a day from listeners,” Hamilton said. “And, of those, I get on the average 10 calls a week on the Cup, which is not a lot. So, that’s 10 out of 300. Three percent.”

And Hamilton acknowledges that some of the calls are part of the “Just-what-is-this-stuff-anyway?” genre.

True Cup fanatics, who have traveled across oceans and thousands of miles to get here, are befuddled by the response. Reports about the race make the front pages of Italian newspapers. Before the Kiwi’s loss to Il Moro de Venezia, interest in New Zealand was just as high.

“They have no idea how to do things (in San Diego),” an irate Tolly Travis of Perth in western Australia told the London Telegraph. “In Newport, the parties went on all day and all night. Everybody had a marvelous time. The America’s Cup ball was out of this world.

“Perth was really lively, too. But San Diego is a dead loss. The problem seems to be there is no sense of style or elegance here. Can you imagine a city that is hosting the America’s Cup and expecting visitors from all over the world to close its restaurants before midnight? I am hoping Italy wins the Cup this time so that the next defense will be in the Mediterranean. The Europeans can bring back the elegance that has disappeared this year.”

Times staff writer Greg Johnson contributed to this story.

ROUND 1: America 3beats Il Moro di Venezia in first race of the America’s Cup finals. C1