Wheels of Fortune : Long Beach Revs Up for Annual High-Profile, High-Profit Grand Prix as Workers Race to Transform City’s Streets Into a Twisting Track

Where once there were streets and sidewalks and parking lots, there is now a serpentine racecourse running through Long Beach. And the grassy stretches near the downtown marina are now grandstands and television towers covered with canopies.

The Long Beach Grand Prix, which shares double billing with the Queen Mary as a symbol of this city, is going up, a racetrack once again created from scratch.

Now, the pace of the workmen is more hectic, the tempo more pronounced, because the race is this Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and there is still much to be done.

Already, the roar of powerful Indy cars has become a part of the downtown cacophony as drivers test their engines and the course.

After 21 years, that sound has become synonymous with spring in Long Beach. The so-called “world’s fastest beach party” is about to make this city the noisiest spot in Southern California, not to mention one of the most crowded.

And, for most, that roar is a welcome one because it means dollars for merchants, guests for hotels, patrons for downtown restaurants and the best way for the city to strut its best stuff.

It is an event in which a portion of the city is transformed into a 1.59-mile raceway that will draw about 270,000 people over three days. Streets will be closed off. Parking lots will be jammed. Earplugs will be in great demand.

And the very difficult task of building a racecourse--including the installation of 7,200 tons of concrete barriers, 10 miles of fencing, 70,000 feet of telephone wiring, 19 grandstands, 10 television towers, seven big-screen viewing boards and 54 VIP suites--will have been completed once again.

“It’s like building a city within a city,” said Dwight Tanaka, who has been in charge of assembling the privately financed Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach for the past 19 years.

So how does this compare to Southern California’s other big-numbers event, the Rose Parade?

“They put in seating for 100,000, we put it in for 66,000,” Tanaka said. “At that point, they are done. I still have to build a racetrack.”

The Long Beach Grand Prix, by far the biggest road race in the United States, was the brainchild of a former travel agent named Christopher R. Pook, who put together the first race in 1975. In those days, the Long Beach skyline had a seedy look and the businesses leaned toward tattoo parlors and X-rated movie theaters--hardly the stuff of the European road-racing circuit.

But Pook, the consummate entrepreneur and racing enthusiast, brought the first race to Long Beach on Sept. 28, 1975. After a sputtering start, the Grand Prix took hold. Now, it brings about $30 million in business to Long Beach each year.

In fact, City Councilman Al Lowenthal gives the Grand Prix credit for keeping the city’s hotels solvent during the financial drought of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s when Long Beach’s financial problems seemed never-ending.

“The Grand Prix got us through the dark period by being a positive image for the city when there were very few other positive images,” he said. “The town for many years was on the way down. The Navy was pulling out, aerospace was shrinking, there was poor planning for neighborhoods, gangs were increasing, and there was an explosion in the school population. We weren’t getting a whole lot of positive press. The one bright spot that brought people to Long Beach was that weekend. . . . It has been our beacon.”

Now, of course, things are different in Long Beach. The seedy downtown--at least a good deal of it--has been replaced by gleaming high-rises along the shoreline. The new convention center has added stability to the hotels by bringing them more year-round business.

Restaurants, particularly those along trendy Pine Avenue, are having less difficulty making ends meet. Still, the Grand Prix remains the economic plum.

Take, for instance, the Hyatt Regency hotel. Located smack in the middle of the racecourse, the hotel’s access to city streets will be blocked from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. for the three days of the Grand Prix. But Cheryl Phelps, the Hyatt’s vice president and managing director, said that is a minor aggravation compared to the amount of business done in that weekend.

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Each roof of the multilevel hotel is rented out for daylong private parties, every room has been booked months in advance (with a four-day minimum stay), booze will flow freely in the bars, and the restaurants will be jammed.

“We get a lot of repeat business from people who even specify which room they want,” Phelps said. “They have it down to a science.”

So do those putting on the race. Tanaka, the man in charge of the setup operation, said he spends much of the year planning for the Grand Prix, making sure that all the infrastructure needs, such as police and fire protection, are in place.

“There’s a misconception we only work three days a year,” Tanaka said. “We start planning a year in advance. While we’re installing the ’96 race, I’m working on ’97.”

The actual construction of the racecourse begins exactly two months before the Grand Prix weekend, using equipment that is stored in a huge warehouse and two outdoor lots. Tanaka said the first order of business is to lay out the racecourse with a string of 12-foot-long, four-ton concrete blocks.

“That dictates where everything is going to go,” he said.

From there, the safety fencing begins to go up, as do the first grandstands. Cement is used to smooth out the seams where the blocks are joined, primarily so cars scraping the wall won’t catch an edge. Then, all the blocks are given a fresh coat of white paint a week before race day.

Last Monday, Steve Lakner began laying 70,000 feet of telephone cable throughout the racecourse. He said that getting the job done would take him right up to the day before the race, and that he and his crew would be on call for any emergencies during the weekend.

“All I’ll get to see is the start of the race,” he said.

There are those, of course, who are not overly fond of the race, particularly those who live or have non-tourist businesses close by. As happens each year, race coordinators will offer residents living near the racecourse two field trips during the weekend--one to the Los Angeles Zoo, the other to Palm Springs.

Looff’s, an arcade located only steps from the racecourse, will stay open. But Al Brown, Looff’s manager, described it as the “worst weekend of the year.”

And Rick Walters, the manager of nearby Bert Grimm’s Tattooing (“Famous the World Over”), said he just shuts down and stays home that weekend.

“It’s not worth the hassle,” he said. “We don’t do any business, and people are always coming in wanting to use the phone or the bathroom.”

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Meanwhile, the work goes on to fine-tune the raceway. The last of the risers still have to go up. When it is all over, Tanaka said, it will have cost about $1.8 million to build and then take down the racecourse. He also said the worst time for those involved in the Grand Prix will be the Monday morning after the race, when he and his staff begin tearing down everything they have built.

“When you build, it’s like you build a monument and then all of the sudden you have to take it down,” he said. “The day after the event you go, ‘Is this all worth it?’ The only thing left when we are through are the tire marks on the ground.”

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Long Beach Grand Prix

The event that brings approximately $30 million to the city will take place this weekend, with qualifying races Friday and Saturday and championship runs Sunday along the 1.59- mile course. Although it is probably wise to avoid the area because of heavy traffic and some street closures, Ocean Boulevard will remain open at all times.