Regatta Means Smooth Sailing for Some Businesses, Others in Doldrums : America’s Cup: Cash registers ring for a few, but most ventures and visitors bemoan lack of local enthusiasm for the event.

At high noon Thursday, Janet Hanson stood cramped in a room of wall-to-wall people. An estimated 700 America’s Cup fanatics slurped beer and chomped on cheeseburgers in the sweaty TGI Friday’s tent near the Santa Fe Depot in downtown San Diego.

There was talk of “Cubens” and “Moromania” as a crowd eagerly awaited the start of Thursday’s fourth race in the finals of the America’s Cup regatta. A casual observer would have thought the city had gone sail-crazy.

Not!

Hanson, 38, a nurse attending a convention devoted to the treatment of cancer patients, hails from Annapolis, Md., where sailing “is a part of the rhythm of life. Annapolis lives and breathes sailing,” she said.

“And it’s great to be here in a room of sailing enthusiasts, but . . . “

She paused and looked around.

“I’m really surprised there’s not more excitement in San Diego--outside of this room,” she said. “It’s much quieter than all of us expected.”

“All of us” were the other nurses and doctors in town for the cancer convention. Many chose to come to a gathering they might have passed up, she said, had the lure of a sexy regatta not drawn them in droves.

Frank Cruz-Aedo, the associate general manager of the TGI Friday’s tent--the centerpiece of the America’s Cup International Centre--said Thursday that, after a slow start, business has been so successful in recent weeks that the tent may stay open through July’s Baseball All-Star Game.

“Lately, it’s just been packed,” he said. “People, people, people every day. It’s been really popular with downtown workers on the lunch hour.”

But he and Hanson should have been in Coronado, where “quiet” almost gave way to “sleepy” Thursday afternoon.

John Sawicki had expected massive daily crowds at his Kiwinado bar and restaurant, named in honor of the New Zealand Challenge, which set up its multimillionaire compound next door to Sawicki’s eatery on Marine Way in Coronado.

But then the New Zealanders blew a 3-1 lead and lost to Il Moro di Venezia, which, after Thursday, found itself trailing by the same score to America 3 in the finals. Sawicki said he lost $250,000 on the Kiwinado venture, which he now calls “Cubenado,” a take-off on America 3.

Sawicki expects to be packed on Saturday for what may be the final race, but on Thursday, a handful of people sipping beer sat among dozens of empty tables and squinted at television sets whose screens were partially obscured by the glare of a searing sun.

“Had the Kiwis won, it would have been Nellie bar the door,” said Sawicki, who, like many Coronado merchants, expected 30,000 visitors from New Zealand for the finals alone.

Even so, Coronado may have fared better than any other city in the county in reaping at least a portion of the $1-billion profit that race organizers originally predicted would finagle its way into the local economy.

The manager of the Oakwood Apartments complex in Coronado, where many of the 190 Kiwi crew members stayed for a year and a half, says he was thrilled with the regatta, winning hundreds of thousands of dollars in guaranteed rent for 18 months.

Sawicki said toilet paper and paper-plate manufacturers, dry cleaning operators, restaurateurs, shoe-repair stands, grocers and theater managers all benefited from having had the Kiwis in Coronado. And, clearly, the payoff could have been bigger if New Zealand had been in the finals.

Even Allan Lazaro, 18, who mans the Mrs. Field’s cookie shop near the Kiwinado, said he sold at least a cookie a day to a visiting Kiwi.

“And, they bought a lot of coffee,” Lazaro said.

Sawicki and others in Coronado say that, if the regatta returns to San Diego in 1995, Coronado should fare even better. Sawicki goes so far as to say that as many as four or a five syndicates, maybe more, could set up shop in Glorietta Bay, near the Hotel del Coronado.

But Mayor Mary Herron is skeptical.

“I agree we’ve had a wonderful time and probably ended up being the frosting on the cake for the whole event, but . . . I think having a bunch of syndicates here is unrealistic,” Herron said.

She said the city has “other uses envisioned for Glorietta Bay--a community center, perhaps an expanded City Hall--that we hope to have completed by ’95. It’s hard to see where we would put a number of syndicates.”

Even so, Herron said the event was “quite pleasantly surprising,” and she’s willing to listen to anyone’s offer, especially in light of the stunning success that New Zealand’s presence in the finals would have meant.

But the too-big expectations and massive payoffs that never materialized ended up creating some of the scenes like those found at the Kiwinado on Thursday. Hugh Lester, 29, a carpenter from El Cajon, took time out for lunch to sit in the bar and watch TV.

“I don’t come in that often, but I never see it crowded here, so it’s a good place to have lunch,” said Lester, who sat alone at a table for eight, with no one near him. “I’m by myself, ‘cause the other guys at work, they’re just not into it. Not at all.”