Race is on for Volvo Ocean rooms

NEW WAVE: A rendering of the proposed upgrades at Fort Adams in Newport. The state has made significant investments in Newport’s sailing infrastructure over the last three years. / COURTESY LOUIS BERGER GROUP
NEW WAVE: A rendering of the proposed upgrades at Fort Adams in Newport. The state has made significant investments in Newport’s sailing infrastructure over the last three years. / COURTESY LOUIS BERGER GROUP

More than a year before the first sail appears on the Newport horizon, corporations, sponsors and competitors are already booking Rhode Island hotel rooms and planning events for the Volvo Ocean Race.
The around-the-world sailing contest starting this fall and calling on Newport next May is expected to be, economically, the largest maritime sporting event in Ocean State history, potentially dwarfing the America’s Cup World Series event in 2012.
“Volvo has generated more hotel-room bookings and special-event venue bookings than any other marine event that we have helped organize,” said Brad Read, executive director of SailNewport, the local host for the Volvo. “And it is not just a Newport event: Middletown, Providence Warwick, Jamestown, Narragansett and even Westerly are seeing activity.
“We are not only the only North American port, but one of two spots where all major players are bringing pavilions showcasing their companies,” Read added. “The business-to-business of this race is intense and relationships with foreign corporations will have lasting benefits.”
Although Newport’s sailing heritage is unrivaled in the United States, its return to the stage of the sport’s “mega-marine events,” as Read described them, like the Volvo and America’s Cup World Series, is more than a cyclical return to fashion.
The state has made significant investments in Newport’s sailing infrastructure over the last three years and Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee’s fiscal 2015 budget includes $2.85 million to continue work at Fort Adams in advance of the Volvo.
The central element of the Fort Adams project is the construction of a new 240-foot, fixed pier extending from the east side of the park near the visitors center into Brenton Cove.
The state is also contributing $1.7 million to the construction of a new 8,000-square-foot “Midpark Recreation and Education” center being built for SailNewport.
Without the new pier, Read and state officials say Newport could never have won nor accommodated the Volvo race, with its 65-foot yachts and various support craft. In total, the Fort Adams improvements, which started in 2011, are expected to cost $10 million, according to Joseph Dias, chief of the division of planning and development at the R.I. Department of Environmental Management, which manages Fort Adams.
Not everyone has agreed with the spending.
The Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity, a conservative think tank, last month highlighted both the $10 million for Fort Adams and another $775,000 in next year’s budget proposal specifically for the Volvo, as top examples of wasteful government spending.
“In a surprising example of corporate welfare and subsidizing the fun and games of the rich, the governor calls for a $775,000 handout to the Volvo Ocean Regatta,” the center said in its Spotlight on Spending report.
Melissa Czerwein, spokeswoman for the R.I. Commerce Corporation, said the $775,000 would go to “public safety, sanitation and event logistics” for the Volvo.
The same amount was budgeted for the America’s Cup World Series in 2012.
Along with government officials, Rhode Island’s sailing and tourism industry leaders argue its money well spent.
Martha Sheridan, president and CEO of the Providence Warwick Convention and Visitors Bureau, said by early April 1,000 room nights had been booked for the Volvo in member hotels.
“A lot of the Volvo’s corporate partners will be staying in Providence,” Sheridan said. “We were not really able to track similar bookings for the America’s Cup.”
Sheridan said companies connected with the Volvo are in talks about sponsoring a Waterfire Providence lighting and hosting at least one large, special event in the city.
The race weekend coincides with local college graduations, making for a busy few days for local hotels, but nothing they aren’t eager to handle, Sheridan said.
While calculating the returns on investments from sporting events is always an elusive game, Rhode Island leaders hope this will not be the last major event to utilize the new pier and facilities at Fort Adams.
America’s Cup organizers invited Rhode Island to submit a bid, which it did, to be the host venue for the 2017 competition (which the United States retained in races last year in San Francisco.) Read at SailNewport said the winning venue is expected to be announced this summer and doesn’t preclude another smaller “World Series” event like 2012.
Even without the America’s Cup, Read said Newport’s competitive sailing landscape has outgrown local facilities.
“We are already bursting at the seams,” Read said. “The number of world championships is growing and it is directly because of new infrastructure at Fort Adams. We have four international championships bringing people from five continents this year.”
In addition to hosting racing, SailNewport’s new Midpark building planned for Monroe Road will host the organization’s sailing and oceanic-environmental education programs, which serve Rhode Island schools and youth groups.
It will also provide space for public restrooms for the park and facilities for the rugby and soccer teams that use nearby fields.
SailNewport is leveraging the state’s $1.7 million contribution for the building with $2.2 million it intends to raise itself.
Read said fundraising is still ongoing, but SailNewport hopes to break ground and finish construction by the end of this year.
Crews began driving pilings for the new pier last month, Dias said, and will work through the summer with a break during the Newport Jazz and Folk festivals, to complete the structure by the end of the year.
Starting next January, the state will dredge the area around the pier to increase water depths to 19 feet, he said.
Along with hosting events like the Volvo, the pier will also be the permanent home for the under-construction Oliver Hazard Perry, the state’s official training ship. It will also include two new sewage pump-out stations to boost transient boating in Newport.
Floating docks connected to the pier’s south side will also provide a new pickup and drop-off point for water taxis, which could reduce automobile traffic by increasing marine transportation between downtown and the park. •

No posts to display