Merchants, Start Your Engines

The most frequent sound you hear in the air of downtown Long Beach these days is the roar of high-performance race car engines in town for the Toyota Grand Prix. But there is a much sweeter sound to business and political leaders--the steady ka-ching of busy cash registers.

Back in 1974, some thought the street race that takes over downtown Long Beach this time every year would never work.

Instead, in its 23rd year, the race has succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. It has become America’s largest street race and the signature event in Long Beach, a nonstop party that brings overflow crowds to local hotels and restaurants and national and international recognition to a city that desperately wants to feel good about itself.

During the three days of racing, which began Friday with practice runs and qualifying, the Grand Prix attracts roughly 300,000 visitors. About 220,000 of them are paid admissions, making the Grand Prix California’s biggest special sporting event, promoters say, and the nation’s second most popular Indy car race, trailing only the Indianapolis 500.

This year fans, sightseers, race car crews, automobile manufacturers, cigarette companies and dozens of other sponsors will generate $37 million for the local economy.

“This is the most important event the city has all year, bar none,” City Councilman Mike Donelon said moments after stepping out of a pace car that took him around the Grand Prix track at breathtaking speeds. A longtime race fan, he jokes that he ran for the City Council to get Grand Prix weekend perks, like better seats.

“It is like having the Super Bowl in your city every year, without the long-term cost of building a stadium,” said City Manager James C. Hankla.

For 51 weeks of the year, Long Beach languishes in the southeast corner of Los Angeles County, with both its economy and stature as California’s fifth-largest city dwarfed by the enormous presence of Los Angeles.

Buffeted in recent years by the pullout of the Navy and hard economic hits from corporate downsizings and collapsing real estate prices, the city’s hotels struggle most of the year with occupancy rates that are among the lowest in the county.

But during Grand Prix week, the Hyatt Regency--the only hotel inside the race course--charges premium rates, $250 a night and up for its 521 rooms. Demand is so high, the hotel requires a minimum four-night stay.

“We have to turn away 10 reservations for every one we accept,” said David Peckinpaugh, the hotel’s director of sales and marketing.

Peckinpaugh said money from room rentals, restaurants, catering and other hotel services at the Hyatt was comparable to the business done at the last Super Bowl by the chain’s New Orleans hotel and by its San Diego hotel during the Republican National Convention in 1996.

Rates similar to the Hyatt’s are charged at other downtown hotels, which also sell out. And the city’s best downtown restaurants are also bursting with race enthusiasts.

“Grand Prix week is our biggest week of the year--nothing else comes close to it,” said John Morris, owner of Mum’s restaurant on Pine Avenue, where stargazers may find champion driver Bobby Rahal or actor Paul Newman, who sponsors a racing team.

Morris said tables on the patio along Pine are booked a year in advance, mostly because people want to watch the passing parade. “It’s just one big party for four nights,” he said.

Early Friday morning, thousands of race fans began pouring into the Convention Center racetrack site below Ocean Boulevard for practice and qualifying for Sunday’s big race. By noon, long lines of fans began forming outside the garage area, where mechanics constantly tweak the car engines, and concession stands and souvenir booths were doing a brisk business.

“It’s become a tradition for us,” said Kathy Schloe, a retired library worker from Cal State Dominguez Hills who by midmorning was well into what will be a four-day tailgate party with friends and family members from Torrance.

The group arrived Thursday evening in four motor homes, establishing an encampment in the infield area where the smell of grilled burgers mixed with the acrid odor of the methanol-powered race cars that flew by every few seconds on the track just yards away.

Schloe said the group had enough beer, soda, steak, chicken, burgers and shrimp to keep them going until Sunday evening. “We’ve been doing this nine or 10 years,” she said.

Just about every pedestrian bridge and public building adjacent to the 1.59-mile-long racetrack carries the name of a corporate sponsor.

Trackside hospitality tents rent for up to $48,000 for three days, and there is such high demand that race promoters say there is always a need to find space for just one more.

And all of this might never have happened had it not been for the tenacity of a transplanted Englishman.

The race is the brainchild of Christopher R. Pook, 58, who with some other businessmen thought the race was something the city needed to draw attention to itself. At the time, Long Beach was taking a drubbing over all the money it was pouring into the Queen Mary and was contemplating building a huge convention center.

It needed something positive to sell to the world. Ocean Boulevard, now lined with glossy high-rises, had no major hotels and was known for its porno theater, dives and tattoo parlors.

“Our group thought we could spend an incredible amount of money on advertising to promote Long Beach or we could do something outrageous, like shut down some of its streets and run racing cars around them, like they do in Monte Carlo,” said Pook, who at the time was running a local travel agency. “So that is how we projected the idea to city fathers. Initially, they thought we should be locked up.”

With the help of a small army of volunteers, which became known as the Committee of 300, the race was launched.

“My first job was to put canvas banners over the marquee of the porno theater,” said John R. Knauf, one of the early volunteers who now heads up charity events that over the last five years have generated $750,000.

Pook said he never dreamed that the Grand Prix would become as big as it has. From the base in Long Beach, Pook has built a national racing enterprise, with tracks in Memphis, Tenn., and St. Louis. Last year the company took in $15 million, 72% of that from the Grand Prix, a fact not lost on Pook.

When he took the Grand Prix Assn. of Long Beach public at $10 a share last year, Pook said Wall Street investment bankers had misgivings about using the city in his company’s name.

“Our answer was, ‘Wait a minute,’ ” he said, “This is a brand name that is known all over the world.”

Certainly there are those who resent the Grand Prix and all it means: traffic snarls, the deafening noise of screaming high performance car engines, and the invasion of hordes of out-of-towners.

To appease some of the critics, the Grand Prix offers free bus rides out of town for residents living near the track. Buses take the fleeing residents to Palm Springs today and the Los Angeles Zoo on Sunday.

“I usually go to Palm Springs,” said Lee Wright, 58, who lives in the Blackstone apartments on the south side of Ocean Boulevard, about a block from the course.

A frail, elderly woman who would identify herself only as Joanne also will be on the trip to Palm Springs.

A resident of the Breakers apartments on Ocean, she ventured out one day this week during warmup runs for today’s pro/celebrity race.

“I hope you will find someone with something positive to say about the race, because I positively can’t stand it,” she said. “I have excellent hearing and want to keep it.”

Critics such as these, though, are definitely in the minority.

Much to the delight of city leaders, television as well as painters and photographers who follow car racing make heavy use of familiar Long Beach landmarks: the whale murals on the Long Beach Arena, the Queen Mary, and the grandstands set up against the backdrop of downtown high-rises.

“Long Beach is my favorite,” said motor sports painter Randy Owens, who moves around a 22-race circuit, painting and hawking his wares, which include a line of colorful, flashy shirts and jackets bearing racing designs.

One happy customer was Beth Morreale. Wearing a red, Owens-designed leather jacket that cost her $850, she paid an additional $350 for a stylish light jacket for her husband, Tony.

The couple take off a week each year to work as race volunteers. They paid $1,200 for a room at the Hyatt so they can party without worrying about driving to their home in Fullerton every night.

Eclipsing the partying and racing togs, Beth said, is the racing itself. “As soon as you hear those engines, you get in the mood,” she said. “The sound of those engines roaring by gets my adrenaline going like nothing else I know.”