City officials who put all their horsepower behind the Baltimore Grand Prix are firing back at their critics, saying that the massive Labor Day weekend Indy-style race on downtown city streets was “undeniably successful” and that complaints from city neighborhoods and business-owners are “a weird Baltimore thing.”

“Folks, we just hosted the largest sporting event in the city’s history!” exclaimed Baltimore City Councilman William H. Cole IV. “This weekend was a resounding success. But not if you talk to people in Baltimore!”

“I’m baffled by Baltimore’s ability to deride our most wonderful accomplishments,” Cole said in a phone interview, following his appearance at a Thursday news conference at the Inner Harbor along with Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, as she announced preliminary data suggesting the event boosted average weekend revenue for area hotels by 44 percent.

Rawlings-Blake, the front runner in next week’s Democratic mayoral primary, also expressed frustration at the complaints about the race event.

“You can hear from international and national perspective that we should be so proud,” she said. “The thing that frustrates me in, all of this, is that inside the Beltway, we seem determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”

Preliminary Prix Numbers

The news conference assembled a number of other officials to crow about the event and congratulate organizers on the results of a sampling conducted by Forward Analytics, a Pittsburgh-based marketing and economic research firm.

“We couldn’t be more pleased with our involvement in the inaugural Baltimore Grand Prix,” Terry Angstadt, president of INDYCAR’s commercial division, said at the news conference. “The reception from the city and the fans was overwhelming. “

Tom Noonan, president and CEO of Visit Baltimore, also praised the Prix: “The inaugural Baltimore Grand Prix was a great event for attracting tourists to Baltimore and changing people’s perceptions about the city.”

The hotel revenue bump was based on a sampling of 10 hotels, according to Visit Baltimore, the city’s sales and marketing arm. Forward Analytics is completing a fuller report that scheduled to be released on Oct. 1.

The preliminary report also said that the event produced for city-owned parking garages a 110 percent increase in revenue over last year and sold more than 100,000 tickets, according to data from Ticketfly.

Grand Prix officials have said the three-day event drew more than 150,000 people, but called the numbers preliminary.

The organizers backed off earlier claims that the event was the most-watched Indy-car event in the history of the cable channel Versus. (Now there’s a claim!) In the wake of reporting by The Sun’s David Zurawik, they are now saying that, with 591,000 viewers on Sunday, it was second-most such event watched on Versus.

Unanswered at the press conference: whether the Grand Prix produce the $70 million economic impact over five years – for shopping, hotels, food, etc. – promised in this report used as the major selling point for the the city-subsidized first-time event.

Paying the Bills

The other matter that remains unclear are the event’s costs. The city is holding $750,000 from Baltimore Racing Development in escrow and will send the bill to the group within 45 days of the event. The bill is then due 15 days from the day it is received.

That amount includes $250,000 for the licensing fee and $500,000 to pay the city back for the additional police, public works and other services. The city’s costs were more than that, a spokesman for the mayor’s office told the Sun, but did not “greatly exceed” $500,000.

The event was not expected to make money in its first year and it didn’t, Baltimore Racing Development (BRD) President Jay Davidson has said.

The group faces a number of dunning lawsuits, including one from race founder Steven C. Wehner, who says he is owed $575,000, and another from former shareholder Sean Conley, who says he is owed $409,000. An attorney Hilary S. Schultz, has also sued BRD, saying they owe her more than $300,000.

Davidson has declined to comment on Schultz’ suit but told The New York Times the group would mount “a strong defense” to the complaints filed by Wehner and Conley and could “make up any shortfall in its estimated $10 million in obligations with help from its partners.”

Nattering Nabobs in the Neighborhoods?

Cole, in whose district the race was run and who was its most energetic political champion, said much of the bad-mouthing  was “a weird Baltimore thing” but acknowledged that “there are some things we can do better next year.”

“We need to try and market those neighborhoods even more,” he said, mentioning signage and coupons as possible strategies. Businesses in adjacent neighborhoods, such as Federal Hill, complained that Prix ticketholders were never directed onto the other side of the “payline.”

In the organizers’ defense, Cole said divided opinion within the neighborhoods themselves is one reason why more wasn’t done to channel visitors there. He noted that Federal Hill people said they “didn’t want an entrance to the event at Charles Street.”

“Residents didn’t want to see 15,000 people troop through their front door,” Cole said, “But the commercial side, the merchants, they would love to have it.”

As for hotels, Cole said he was frustrated by critics who point to the fact that some hotels had empty rooms but ignore the fact that their business was still better than last year’s.

“I’m baffled as to why one bed and breakfast would report empty rooms and another two did well,” Cole said. He said he was also “baffled” as to why some restaurants did poorly over the weekend while others did well.

“A lot of it is that we scared people,” he said. “Scared a lot of the locals, away from downtown with warnings about the traffic.” (During the event itself, getting in to downtown and even finding free street parking was quite easy.)

“There are a lot of things we could do better: the Family Fun Zone, more pedestrian bridges, better ingress and egress, marketing to restaurants and hotels,” Cole said. “This was a start-up organization. We’ll do better next year.”