Is calling LB America’s ‘Aquatic Capital’ good for Long Beach’s image or just Chris Pook’s wallet?

ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY

Chris Pook’s name is buried deep in a committee that’s asking Long Beach to declare itself the Aquatic Capital of America, but circumstances suggest that the city’s hungriest political insider may be scheming for control of another stream of power and tax dollars.

Pook has specialized in enterprises buttressed by public money for more than three decades. He most famously parlayed his spunky ingenuity and city largesse into the founding of the Long Beach Grand Prix in 1975. In succeeding years, however, Pook has been involved in such lesser-known city-related agencies as the business-networking organization Long Beach, Inc.; the athletic promotion Long Beach Sports Council; and most recently, the Sea Festival.

Along the way he has gained vast influence at City Hall among the many elected officials for whom he has overseen campaign fundraising, as well as with the department heads and staff members whom he often deploys as if they were his employees. Pook is so untouchable that he and the Sports Council walked away unscathed from the 2004 Olympic Swim Trials fiasco that ran up a $1.3 million deficit—eventually paid off by the Long Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Now comes a weird proposal from a group of wealthy men—most of them Pook’s buddies at the Long Beach Yacht Club (LBYC) and Pook’s board members with the Sea Festival Association: that Long Beach be officially declared as the Aquatic Capital of America; and furthermore, that their Aquatic Committee be assigned to “develop, market and promote” what it calls the city’s “abundance of aquatic assets and activities.”

Of course, the city already has two award-winning organizations handling those duties: the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Marine creates, organizes, and executes facilities and programs; while the Convention and Visitors Bureau markets and promotes the city to tourists and conventioneers.

“We don’t have any complaints with Parks and Rec,” says Tom Shadden, the soft-natured former commodore of the LBYC and current member of the Sea Festival board of governors, who is serving as the Aquatic Committee’s frontman. “But our aquatic areas have never been promoted or marketed. The city needs to recognize this.”

But it’s perhaps also worth recognizing that Pook already exercises considerable power within Parks and Recreation. For example, in 2005 and 2006, department director Phil Hester helped Pook operate the Sea Festival without a signed contract with the city—in defiance of a City Council order—by granting him use of public resources and personnel.

Pook has no access to the Convention and Visitors Bureau budget, which consists of $7.5 million in direct appropriations from the City Council and another $4 million in bed taxes—although those resources would likely come in handy with his Sea Festival promotion.

Pook was out of town and could not be reached for comment for this story. But he will be back by Tuesday, when the Aquatic Capital of America concept is pitched to the City Council—significantly, bolstered by a promotional video that Shadden acknowledged was researched and produced for the poor little rich guys of the Aquatic Committee by the taxpayer-funded Department of Parks and Recreation.

Considering that council members Suja Lowenthal, Gary DeLong, and Val Lerch teamed to put the Aquatic Capital of America proposal on the agenda, the plan already seems to have three of the five votes needed to pass.

What plan? Exactly.

An eight-page concept proposal showed up amid councilmembers’ paperwork a few days before it was placed on the July 24 agenda—interestingly, one item ahead of a proposal to study a reconfiguration of the Long Beach Breakwater. The document inventoried various water-related facilities and events, slapped a value of $1 billion on them, suggested they are not being used to maximum benefit, and laid out an array of highfalutin goals that included enhanced tourism, employment, education, recreation, support of corporate-sponsored events, and improved air and water quality. It did not feature specifics.

When the item was about to be heard, however, DeLong suddenly pulled it from the agenda without explanation and asked for a two-week continuance. Whatever DeLong’s reasons, they saved him from some ironic embarrassment, because he proceeded to ally himself with Lowenthal and Lerch to nearly defeat the Breakwater study on a procedural basis, before ultimately casting the lone opposing vote.

Meanwhile, even as Lerch lends his support to a proposal that would laud the sailors, rowers, and power-boaters along the city’s coastline, his Ninth District constituents in the lower-income neighborhoods of North Long Beach do not have a public pool to use again this summer—the result of budget constraints and, as Lerch admits, the fact that “I didn’t put in for it early enough.”

Tags: aquatic capital, breakwater, Chris Pook, delong, lerch, Long Beach, lowenthal