Will the Quiksilver Pro N.Y. return?

City officials are hopeful that the Quiksilver Pro New York competition will return to Long Beach, saying that because the surf contest was a success, Quiksilver is considering making another stop here during next year’s Association of Surfing Professionals pro tour.

City Manager Charles Theofan said that officials intend to discuss bringing back the tournament, and perhaps other events, with Quiksilver.

“I’m fairly confident that they’re going to come back,” Theofan said. “I’ve been in touch with Quiksilver since they’ve left and we exchanged emails, and in the not too distant future we will start to work out the details. We have great ideas for next year, and Quiksilver is thinking about doing more things on the beach.”

The Quiksilver Pro New York, the sixth of 11 stops on this year’s ASP World Tour, was one of the most memorable competitions of the year, with Owen Wright, a 21-year-old rookie, defeating 10-time ASP World Champion Kelly Slater and winning an unprecedented $300,000 top prize.

The competition was to include a two-week music and action sports festival, including a climactic special benefit concert hosted by Slater and featuring surprise guests Jimmy Buffet and Jackson Browne. Much to the disappointment of many residents and visiting surfing fans, however, the festival was canceled in the wake of Tropical Storm Irene. Even before the storm became a factor, the city made last-minute changes in the festival, scaling back its hours and prohibiting the sale of alcohol on the site. Several weeks before the event, city officials, citing the large crowds that high-profile entertainers would attract, decided to cancel Slater’s benefit portion of the concert, Theofan said.

“It would have been great, but the question is, how many people would it have attracted, and the parking?” he said. “… The purpose of all these restrictions — the alcohol for public safety concerns, and the timing of the music — was … the convenience of our residents.”

Theofan said that the city granted Quiksilver an event permit for the competition and surf site — including its merchandise tent. Others involved in talks with Quiksilver said that if the Quik Pro N.Y. returns, the city and Quiksilver would most likely have a contract outlining the details of the event.

Quiksilver officials weigh in

On Sept. 15, Quiksilver CEO Bob McKnight told shop-eat-surf.com, a trade industry news website, that Quiksilver has a three-year agreement with the Association of Surfing Professionals to host an event on the East Coast. McKnight did not say, however, whether the competition would return to Long Beach next year, or perhaps move to another surfing hot spot such as New Jersey or Virginia.

“We signed a three-year deal with the ASP for the rights to run the contest there, but at this point we just don’t know,” McKnight said. “There are some insurance issues we have to get through, and the way the city canceled some of the festival events at the last minute — we have to see. We need some weeks to assess the media impact, the insurance issues, and what [Long Beach] is willing to do for us if indeed we are invited back. We need to measure the success and value of everything.”

Arie Kovant, a managing partner at Catch New York, the public relations firm representing Quiksilver, said that talks have yet to get under way. “It’s no secret: The people of Long Beach and the administration would like to see it done the right way,” Kovant said. “It’s just that the hurricane screwed things up. … We will decide and approach the city once we make a decision to bring it back — it’s all premature at this point. We are going to take the next few weeks to go through what went good and what went bad, and take it from there.”

Quiksilver’s vice president of marketing, Mike Matey, told the Herald that dealing with the city had its challenges — and that the company had contingency plans to hold the event elsewhere — but that Quiksilver wanted to make it work in Long Beach, and ultimately pulled together with the city to host one of the most memorable ASP competitions ever.

Theofan noted those challenges as well. “I would say that there were some disagreements from the administration’s point of view about the festival itself, and there were many things that changed from what [Quiksilver] originally announced in their press release,” he said. “We learned from what we did this year …”

Democratic City Councilman Len Torres said that city officials excluded him and Councilman Mike Fagen from talks with Quiksilver, have largely ignored his Freedom of Information requests about the event and did not do enough to inform the public. Torres said that if Quiksilver decides to return, he would like to see better planning.

“What good is a plan if they don’t tell you about it?” he said. “A lot of our constituents couldn’t get answers from us. We want to be able to be part of the planning process from the very beginning.”

Theofan explained that city officials had planned the event for months, that the Police Department had coordinated efforts with agencies such as the Nassau County Office of Emergency Management and that the council doesn’t usually get involved in such talks. “Events are not generally the type of things that council people are involved in the planning of. That’s what we’re here for in City Hall; we have staff that does these things,” he said. “No City Council person, in the entire time I’ve been city manager, has ever asked to meet with me, and I haven’t met with them.”

The bottom line?

It has yet to be determined how much the city will be reimbursed for the event. Permit fees are standard for any beach event, Theofan said, though he did not disclose the permit fees that Quicksilver paid the city. On the city's website, Theofan said that Long Beach received "hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees for the event."

Quiksilver will also pay Long Beach a “citywide media fee” for the placement of company banners and promotional materials throughout the city. That fee was initially set at $50,000, but city and Quiksilver officials said it could change significantly because the hurricane prevented some of those marketing initiatives. Theofan said that Quiksilver also held funds in escrow to cover the city’s costs of police and sanitation overtime — though he said it was too early to disclose those costs.

“The city is being reimbursed very fairly, and we’re going to end up giving some of that money back [to Quiksilver],” he said. “We think we spent less than what they had given us to hold in escrow.”

Theofan took issue with Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President Mark Tannenbaum’s contention that Quiksilver lost between $25 million and $30 million due to the cancellation of the festival, and that local merchants lost between $10 million and $14 million.

“I think [the event] was great for the merchants,” Theofan said. “To be perfectly honest, I think that Mr. Tannenbaum’s comments representing the chamber were irresponsible, inaccurate.”

Matey said that Quiksilver has yet to release its “budget particulars” related to the event, and added that he was not sure where Tannenbaum’s estimate came from.

Tannenbaum said that merchants who spent money on advertising and inventory were banking on the influx of thousands of visitors to the festival. “Those numbers were brought to us by the people handling the event that we dealt with in town,” he said. “Merchants could have done a lot better … You didn’t have the crowds coming in that you would have had from 10 days of concerts. It’s a shame that it wasn’t taken advantage of.”

Theofan has asked residents to participate in a survey on the Quiksilver Pro New York competition to assess this year's event.

"We would like to make this event even more successful should the Quiksilver Pro return, and we want to assess the possibility of future similar events," Theofan said. "To that end, we are interested in knowing how you, our residents, think we might make an event like this even better next time."

For more information, visit the city’s website at www.longbeachny.org to fill out the “Quiksilver Pro Resident Survey.”

Comments about this story? Arifilato@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.