Long Beach Grand Prix is a ‘marketing megaphone’ for the city
Two dozen racing machines zoomed past the grandstands along Long Beach’s Shoreline Drive on Sunday, showcasing more than enough horsepower to tow the nearby 91,000-ton Queen Mary out of its mooring.
And in drawing about 170,000 fans to see star race car drivers such as Ryan Hunter-Reay and Danica Patrick, city officials are hoping the 36th annual Long Beach Grand Prix will inject some fuel into the sputtering local economy too.
With a 13.5% unemployment rate in March, Long Beach is lagging behind most of Southern California in the race to economic recovery. Home to part of the nation’s busiest seaport complex, the beachfront city was hit hard by the global recession. It saw container traffic at its port drop 22% last year.
Hotels and restaurants emptied out as well, hurting the city’s hospitality sector, as fewer people visited the downtown area for conferences and conventions, according to a study last year by the economics department at Cal State Long Beach.
But this weekend the city’s engine was purring. Downtown hotels sold out for days in a row, and local bars and restaurants said they were having their best stretch of 2010.
“It’s like three New Year’s Eves in a row for us,” said Steve Colvin, a longtime bartender at Alegria Cocina Latina, a Mexican food restaurant on Pine Avenue, a short walk from the race.
City officials said that they didn’t have the funds this year to commission a study on the Grand Prix’s economic impact on the city, but that in years past, the race has brought the area close to $35 million in commerce.
“It’s certainly an economic shot in the arm,” Mayor Bob Foster said. But more than the revenue, he said, the wide exposure the race is a chance to show how far Long Beach has come since its slump of the 1990s, when the city lost 50,000 aerospace and defense jobs and skidded to what Foster called “depression-level conditions.”
In the years since, the city has spent heavily to redefine itself as a convention-friendly destination, one of the few large California cities with a downtown along the water. Long Beach hosts dozens of sports and special events every year, including the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference and the national championships of the American Kennel Club.
But it’s the nationally televised Grand Prix, with its sweeping shots of the city’s sandy beaches, crowded thoroughfares and blue skies, that may be most valuable to the local economy.
“The Grand Prix is a marketing megaphone for Long Beach,” said David Carter, a professor of sports marketing at USC’s Marshall School of Business.
Organizers have long known that a successful weekend means attracting more than just hard-core racing fans.
As cars roared by outside, local rock bands played on an elevated stage in the convention center a few feet from where children were bouncing on an inflatable play area. From rows of booths, vendors sold diamond rings and panoramic photographs of the downtown marina. And Toyota Motor Corp. -- the event’s main sponsor -- showed off a set of souped-up hybrid and electric vehicles, including a sky-blue 2010 Prius with spoilers and tires made from eco-friendly materials.
Palos Verdes resident Julie Cabe Reid stood on the convention floor watching her 11-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter clutch their steering wheels as they raced in an IndyCar video game. Having grown up in Long Beach, Reid said that she had been to nearly every Grand Prix since the race started in 1975 -- and that the city’s progress wasn’t lost on her.
“It’s so much nicer this year and more kid-friendly,” she said.
