Add earthquake to my “list of disasters lived through (Update: and subsequently got me out of work early!)”
Over the weekend, the Sun had a good, if long, piece on the Baltimore Grand Prix, which I’ll summarize in two quotes for the TL;DR set. One!
Parthemos said city employees teamed up with race organizers to produce an economic impact report that indicated the race would have an economic impact of $70 million — nearly twice that of the long-established events in St. Petersburg and Long Beach.
City officials did not complete an independent report on the viability of a street race in Baltimore, but Parthemos said they did their “due diligence.”
“There wasn’t an actual comparison report, but [we were] calling St. Pete’s and having conversations with their teams and calling Long Beach and having conversations with their teams,” she said.
Rawlings-Blake and Parthemos traveled to the Indianapolis 500 last year — at the city’s expense — to meet with IndyCar executives and get an up-close view of how that city puts on a race.
Still, challenges remained. Race backers never produced a title sponsor for the event. And they asked the Maryland Stadium Authority for more time to make bond payments on a $2 million project to create a pit lane in the parking lot at Camden Yards.
Two!
Most races lose money in their first one to three years, according to industry officials. IndyCar builds its schedule around a group of cities, notably Long Beach, Calif., and St. Petersburg, Fla., that have established successful annual events.
Other cities have flirted with street racing, only to see plans fall apart when the rubber met the road.
San Jose, Calif., gave a $4 million subsidy to organizers of the San Jose Grand Prix in the hope that the downtown street race would be a fixture for years to come. It folded in 2007, after three years.
“There’s certainly value to the national, international media exposure,” said San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed. “It brings people to town. But at some point, you have to decide whether you can afford all of that good stuff.”
The governments of Ontario and Toronto spent $2 million in 2008 to keep the Grand Prix of Toronto there. The race was running deficits and the future of the event was in jeopardy.
In St. Petersburg, the city went from charging race organizers $80,000 annually for firefighters, police and sanitation workers, to giving organizers a $150,000 subsidy for those services.
“If you can break even or even come close in this day and age, or not just get annihilated without a title sponsor, you’ve done a hell of a job,” said veteran racing columnist Robin Miller.
I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion the underpants gnomes were running the city.
