September 03, 2011|By Jean Marbella, The Baltimore Sun
"I don't believe it's going to bring in all the money they say it's going to bring in," Baltimore Circuit Court Clerk Frank M. Conaway Sr. said at a candidates forum last week, predicting "a failure" for the event. "I don't believe all the hotels are full."
Former City Councilman Joseph T. "Jody" Landers III said he "would have done more due diligence" than Rawlings-Blake did before signing a five-year commitment to the race. State Sen. Catherine E. Pugh said the road improvement funds should have been spent elsewhere in the city. And Otis F. Rolley slammed the event as a poor substitute for an economic development plan.
"We have to be smart about what we invest our resources in," the former Baltimore planning director said.
Staging a successful Grand Prix could help pad Baltimore's resume as a host city for other major events, according to Dan Knise, who headed the unsuccessful Baltimore-Washington bid for the 2012 Olympics.
"You would have loved to have had a track record of running a major event," like the Grand Prix, said Knise, now president and CEO of Ames & Gough, an insurance brokerage and consulting firm. "Obviously, it helps to have more experience. It tends to build on itself."
Aris Melisseratos, a former Maryland secretary of economic development, sees the Grand Prix as "completing our card" and adding to the area's other sporting and cultural events.
"You need these kinds of things that the city can rally people around," he said.
"Obviously there are risks," Melisseratos said. "But it was the right risk to assume. This could be another Preakness."
jean.marbella@baltsun.com
