Q&A; -- The taste of doing business

Times have been busy for Richard Luehrs, the president and chief

executive of the Newport Harbor Area Chamber of Commerce. The Sept. 11

attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon left the Taste of

Newport, originally scheduled for Sept. 14-16, in a difficult position.

The event has been rescheduled, entertainment intact, for this coming

weekend.

Then there’s the boat parade. In early September, the Chamber

announced that the annual Christmas event will be cut from seven to five

days and its route shortened beginning with the 2002 parade.

Luehrs took a moment to speak to Features Editor Jennifer K Mahal

about both events and what the Chamber does for a community.

What is the role of the Newport Harbor Area Chamber of Commerce in

its community?

Our mission talks about providing leadership, bringing together those

who do business in Newport Beach to improve an economic vitality through

business and community leadership. But we really do that through five

core competencies. Two of them are pretty much related -- government

affairs and political action. The Chamber has a political action

committee, and we endorse candidates. We take on independent expenditures

on behalf of those candidates. We get involved in political activities

like the Greenlight Initiative debate and a host of other statewide and

countywide issues....

When we talk about involving ourselves in the legislative process, it

is important to have a rapport with the legislative representatives, so

statewide, federally, locally with the City Council and with (county

Supervisor) Jim Silva, as well as the city staff members.... We stay

pretty well connected with the activities at city hall, county

government, the state of California, etc.

The third one is community development. Some of the activities that

we’re going to talk about today, the Christmas Boat Parade and the Taste

of Newport, get involved in either community development or economic

development, which is another core competency. In this particular case,

those two events focus themselves on both economic development and

community development because they involve the community.

Because the Taste of Newport has been so successful, it’s able to

generate some revenue that can be turned back through a grant program

that we have to a number of worthwhile organizations. So it fulfills a

couple of functions there. First and foremost, the community comes to

participate, and then secondly through the economic development, the

restaurants are being exposed and hopefully their customers are coming

back and enjoying a dinner later on that they may not have had they not

been exposed to it at the Taste of Newport.

Same thing with the Christmas Boat Parade. It gives us an opportunity

to expand the word about the harbor and the activities that go on at the

beach here so that people who might not be inclined to visit the

community before may do so after witnessing the Christmas Boat Parade....

Additionally, we get involved in economic development. This would be

our fourth core competency.... I believe right now 20 of the 24 members

of the city’s Economic Development Committee are members of the Chamber

of Commerce, so we obviously have some influence there. We are frequently

asked to help businesses either expand or to involve ourselves in

interacting with city staff on a variety of issues that face business and

that sometimes they feel are rules or policies that are counter to a

productive business cycle for a variety of different businesses in the

community, so we do intervene on their behalf.

And then, last but not least is membership services. And here we try

to provide some networking opportunities, some business relationship

building opportunities... like the Business at the Beach business

exposition, where business will be on display and we’ll encourage

businesses doing business with one another and see if we can’t keep that

kind of momentum going. If we do see a downturn in the economic vitality

that it’s a soft downturn and not something very severe. And if we can

try to help recover, we want to do that.

The Taste of Newport was postponed to Oct. 5-7. Tell me a little

bit about how the Chamber came to that decision.

Well, it just so happened that on Tuesday morning [Sept. 11] when the

tragedy occurred, we had a government affairs meeting scheduled at 7:30

a.m. that morning in our conference room. And it just so happens that we

have a television there and we were watching some of the activities and

the drama unfold. And knowing that this was Tuesday morning that on

Friday, just a couple of short days away, we were going to embark on a

rather significant undertaking for the Chamber of Commerce and for the

community.

And if you look at the mission statement for the Taste of Newport,

it’s a celebration of the fine dining opportunities that exist in Newport

Beach. Well if you looked at the picture of what was taking place on

Tuesday morning and then you looked at the mission statement, it was

pretty obvious to us in a hurry that this was no time for a celebration.

A couple of us met on Tuesday morning, about 9 a.m. after that meeting

and after watching some of the tragedy unfold, and we decided that we

should hold off any decisions for 24 hours, which we did. We decided that

we would meet at noon on Wednesday to make a decision. In the meantime, I

would ask staff to undertake the rather large task of determining whether

we could move all of our restaurants, all of the vendors and all of our

sponsors, to see if there was any conflict with moving the event from

that weekend to the weekend of the 5th, 6th and 7th.

And so we went out on a blitz of telephone calls, contacting each of

our participating restaurants, each of our sponsors, each of our vendors

to see -- the entertainment lineup -- to see if we could move the entire

event. So by Wednesday at noon, we did have a very ... clear picture that

we could, in fact, move the event to the 5th.

Do you think the postponement will affect the number of people who

participate or the number of restaurants that are participating?

We know of three [restaurants] that have had previous commitments, or

for one reason or another, can’t be with us. However, there were two

restaurants that couldn’t do the first two dates that now we’ve

re-contacted those so that now there may be a shift in a restaurant or

two or three, but primarily the bulk of them will move from the old date

to the new date without a problem.

{as for people going] that remains to be seen. You know, you have a

marketing plan that kind of leads you up the aisle and you get there and

you pull the plug, you know, 48 hours before, it’s tough. Now I have to

go back and try to reestablish that, and frankly a lot of our marketing

opportunities have been spent on that first effort. Now to go back and

re-market it, we’re in the process of, as we speak, of seeing just what

kind of a financial capability we have to go out and spend some money on

marketing to reintroduce people to the event.

Earlier this month, the Chamber announced that there will be

changes to the annual Christmas Boat Parade -- a shortened parade route

and a shortened number of days -- in 2002. Why did the Chamber decide to

make these changes?

First and foremost, I want to underscore the fact that there will be

no changes for 2001. The changes that we’re contemplating and have

suggested need to occur will commence with the 2002 Christmas Boat

Parade/

The reason that this has come up in the first place is that we have

seen a change in the character of boating and recreational boating in

Newport Harbor over the years. Remember now that I’ve been here for 20

years and have participated in the Christmas Boat Parade each and every

year.

Years ago, I used to go out in a little 18-foot whaler and marshal the

parade myself because I would get calls at home late at night from

restaurants complaining that the boats didn’t go by or there were too

many gaps in the parade or whatever the case was.

Business owners would call me and complain the next day about what

they observed. So I went out there on a regular basis trying to make sure

that the parade followed the course and prevented gaps, etc.

That was the beginning of a much more sophisticated and aggressive

approach that has grown out of that where we have a series of parade

marshals and a parade control officer each evening of the parade.

What’s happened over the years was that we have seen a drop off in the

number of participating vessels that both register with the Chamber of

Commerce and participating, as well as completing the given seven nights

or completing the entire parade route -- to where we have a hundred boats

start out and less than half of them finish.

If you look at the parade route and you see where it begins and

finishes, you’ll notice that the south side of Balboa Island, where a

great number of people gather each evening to view the parade, you’ll see

that that’s at the end of the parade. And that, quite frankly, there were

concerns about the quality of the parade at that end function. So we

started doing some surveying a year ago, and after the previous parade we

talked to our boat participants and we asked them “How many nights did

you come out? Why didn’t you come out more often? Did you complete the

route, and if you didn’t, why not?” and a series of questions like that

and it was very revealing. Boat owners told us that it was very onerous

for them in a very difficult time of year....

And so after going through a series of surveys and focus groups, we

held a series of meetings with potentially affected parties -- such as

restaurants and yacht clubs -- and we held another separate meeting with

the yacht charters, people who make money off of the parade each year, as

well as a host of interested parties.

Through that series of meetings it became apparent that we could make

some minor modifications to the parade route, as well as to the number of

nights, and that it would wind up bringing a better product to the plate

on the remaining nights and to the remaining route.

BIO BOX

Name: Richard Luehrs

Age: 54

Residence: Newport Beach

Job: President and chief executive of the Newport Harbor Area Chamber

of Commerce for the past 20 years

Education: Bachelor’s in accounting from Cal State Northridge

Family: Married with two children

Community affiliations: Serves on Newport Beach’s Economic Development

Committee, chairman of the city’s Building Code Board of Appeals, past

member of 552 Club Board of Directors

Hobbies: Involved with Our Lady Queen of Angels School, spending time

with children, recently broke his leg jumping into a hand cycle