Just as we learn that Oracle Racing will be docked 2 races as a penalty for that cheating scandal, the Chron is now saying that the whole America's Cup will actually still be kind of good for San Francisco. The Weekly disagrees.
Not that any of you care, but the Americans will start the final races at a two-race deficit in punishment for illegal modifications that the Oracle team made to their boats without consulting race officials.
The Chron's John Cote took a kinder look at the numbers, via the city controller, relating to the race and the America's Cup Pavilion complex at Piers 27-29 and he concludes that it's "not a boondoggle" in the end, and will end up generating some revenue for the city, just not the billions once promised by Larry Ellison. And because the size of the thing has shrunk, it will cost less than half of the $50 million once estimated.
Allegedly, 500,000 people have already streamed through the America's Cup Park and Village complexes, not counting others who have watched the racing from elsewhere, and the whole thing has generated jobs and some good publicity for the city among sailing enthusiasts.
Joe Eskanazi at the Weekly sees nothing positive in the numbers, however, citing that the city has spent $13.4 million on the race as of June 30, and only saw $8.4 million of that reimbursed by race fundraisers, $5 million of which was a loan from Ellison. They're now estimating the total cost to be around $22 million, but Eskanazi notes that if the city hopes to reap back its share of the costs through extra hotel taxes, that seems highly unlikely given that hotels are usually at 90 percent occupancy in the late summer months in S.F., and the race would have bring in 31,466 extra hotel guests (almost as many rooms as there are in the city) to make up for just the current shortfall.
