Long Beach Revs Up for Grand Prix Weekend

As Long Beach gets ready for the 25th running of the Toyota Grand Prix, America’s No. 1 street race remains a financial godsend and bellwether for the city’s struggling downtown.

Locals not into auto racing often grouse about the noise, traffic and general insanity of the event, which begins this Friday and runs through the weekend, leading up to the big race Sunday.

But you don’t hear any complaints from City Hall. Allowing cars to run on city streets at speeds up to 200 mph injects an estimated $38 million into the city’s economy.

“It’s become our Super Bowl,” said Mayor Beverly O’Neill. “The city comes alive.”

As the race grew over the last 25 years, so did the city’s downtown, once a seedy collection of rundown businesses, bars and porno theaters that catered to the now abandoned Navy base on Terminal Island. Old-timers remember covering up porno theater marquees to help enhance the city’s image during race week.

Those days are long gone.

For much of the week, and particularly the weekend, the city’s hotels are sold out, restaurants and banquet rooms are booked solid, and storerooms in waterside bars are stocked floor to ceiling with beer, wine and hard liquor.

The Grand Prix once catered to serious fanciers of car racing, the drivers and cars for the early races imported from the Formula One circuit in Europe. Although race promoters knew no one would ever confuse Long Beach with Monaco, they patterned the race after the Monte Carlo Grand Prix, matching some of the world’s best drivers and their high-performance race cars against the twists and turns of downtown city streets, set against the backdrop of a harbor.

These days, the Grand Prix is as much a party as a serious race, attracting as many as 200,000 people over the three days of the event and carried live on ABC television with feeds to more than 190 nations.

Race founder Chris Pook sounds perplexed trying to explain the staying power and success of the Grand Prix, part of the CART FedEx series of international races.

“This event has a mind of its own, a life of its own,” says Pook, figuring that thousands queue up just to people-watch, drink beer, or check out the scene. “We’ve probably got 15,000 people on Sunday who actually don’t see the race.”

And that doesn’t even count thousands more watching from rooftops and trees or leaning from the balconies of the high-rise condo buildings that look down on the racetrack.

Nine weeks before the race, workers descend on Shoreline Drive to start the construction of 21 temporary grandstands, the installation of 1,800 concrete blocks to enclose the track, and the erection of three miles of fencing around the entire circuit.

On top of that, 30 large tents are erected around the 1.85-mile track that are used by Fortune 500-type companies to entertain big account holders and reward employees.

As the race gets closer, the fences get plastered with big ads for Halvoline, Texaco, Toyota and other racing icons.

For a few days, commuters on Shoreline Drive see what the drivers see during the race. Sometimes motorists get carried away and step on the accelerator.

“Some people who drive down there in the morning think they are in the race,” said O’Neill, whose City Hall office looks down on the racecourse.

This year, for the first time, the race will go past the front entrance of the Aquarium of the Pacific.

To prepare, aquarium scientists tape-recorded an earlier race. There was a collective sigh of relief when the fish showed no signs of stress when the sound of car engines and screeching tires was played back to them.

Incorporating the aquarium into the race carries on a longtime Grand Prix tradition. From the start, the race was viewed as a promotional tool to sell Long Beach.

Early races were run around the construction site of the city’s convention center at Pine Avenue and Shoreline Drive.

A few years later, high-rises and new hotel construction on Ocean Boulevard crowded the race off Ocean to a new layout closer to the waterfront. When the Hyatt Regency opened in 1983, the race went through its garage.

“There is a real direct line between the Grand Prix and the evolution of the city of Long Beach,” said Linda Howell DeMario, chief executive officer of the Long Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Restaurateur Enzo De Muro counts the days to each year’s race. He uses the wave of race fans hitting the city to break in new Pine Avenue restaurants.

Nine years ago, De Muro opened the pricey Italian restaurant L’Opera. Four years later, it was Alegria. This year, it’s a high-end steak house, The Madison.

“The Grand Prix is my good luck charm,” said De Muro.