CART officials look at Oregon possibilities

[¡As-de-mim!]

04/24/03
JERRY F. BOONE

Chris Pook remembers when business in downtown Long Beach, Calif., consisted of seedy bars and tattoo parlors. Today downtown is marked by high-rise office towers, trendy restaurants and tourist trade -- much of it the result of the city taking advantage of the Champ Car race that Pook founded.

The same series comes annually to Portland, complete with exotic 800 horsepower engines hurtling cars around Portland International Raceway.

Although Long Beach has used the event to open the door to thousands of jobs, Pook contends the race has been practically ignored by Portland and Oregon, a state with one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation. About all the city does to promote the race at PIR is keep the grass mowed.
That difference in approach is a source of frustration for Championship Auto Racing Teams officials and local business leaders. Pook, who founded the Grand Prix of Long Beach, now heads the racing series and views Oregon's apparent indifference to the race as an opportunity lost.

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/o...8555956740.xml Article

[Muzza]

This subject was discussed at Ten Tenths at length last year. Yes, the Portland race is underpromoted, and the track is in poor shape, the facilities are appaling. After last year's race I posted a thread calling it the "most poorly organized event I have ever attended in a major racing championship".

Although I love Portland as a town - together with Seattle, they are my favorite American cities - I would like to see this race run elsewhere. The big "but" is that the Pacific Northwest is all too important to CART, and there are no other adequate venues available around (Lee, macdaddy, you may recall our debate about this).

Is this an indication that we are going to see yet another street race added to the calendar - maybe in Seattle?

[Tailwind]

I remember Mr. Boone being one of the writers that had been writing the inscription on the CART tombstone last fall. Now he speaks of the benifits of a Champ Car race to the local economy. I know this is a trend we have seen in other places as well, but it makes me smile.

[The Snout]

Pook said at I think the Portland town meeting that there's little hope of a street race in Seattle. Politics or something. So while Portland may not be doing the best promo job I think CART sees little alternative, they need to lend a hand and fix an issues.

[Dov]

Correct me if Im wrong, but I think that Seattle has a lot of environmental activists (tree huggers) that live there and they would be nun to happy to have 18 to 20 ChampCars polluting their city. That may be one of the problems, but I could be wrong?

[rustyfan]

Originally posted by Muzza
Is this an indication that we are going to see yet another street race added to the calendar - maybe in Seattle?

Like we don't have enough of them already.

[racerkeke]

I understand that one of the difficulties with PIR is that there are multiple organizations, all with a piece of the pie, involved. The track is part of a city park, so you have Parks and Rec or somesuch, plus the actual city government. The Rose Festival actually runs the race, and they're a non-profit group, who from their photos look like a bunch of "ladies who lunch" and Rotarians. Then you have the environmental impact people, which is why the chicane is the way it is -- there's a duck living in the slough driver's right and we can't bother it. I'm sure the Port of Portland has a piece of this too, altho I'm not sure.

Lest you think I am talking thru my hat, all I had to do to come up with the above was remember how many people we had to ask, just to pull the top of the fence at the chicane down a foot so our blue flagger could get her arm out. One (we don't know which one) said no, so we had to find her a box to stand on, which to me is a worker's compensation issue (another layer of bureaucracy) if she ever fell off!

Love the track. Hate the politics.

keke