CITY HALL — Following a successful Los Angeles Marathon that ended in Downtown Santa Monica for the first time on March 21, officials here are continuing to hold talks with organizers who hope to give Santa Monica a race all its own.
The proposed event would be shorter, but its 13-mile course would be entirely within Santa Monica and would exclusively benefit the Santa Monica-Malibu Education Foundation, said Laurence Cohen, the proposed event’s main organizer. Funds raised by sponsored runners would go toward creating an endowment to fund athletic programs at local schools.
There’s no approved route for the race, but Cohen said he hopes to design a Santa Monica-centric half marathon course that sends runners down the Third Street Promenade.
“The idea is that the course would include all the iconic elements of Santa Monica,” he said.
Cohen, who for 15 years helped promote the L.A. Marathon before Frank McCourt bought the race, said he’s met with multiple City Hall officials to discuss the idea. The City Council endorsed the concept of holding a half-marathon last summer, when momentum was building for hosting the L.A. Marathon’s finish line.
The bigger race has caused Cohen to postpone his plans — he’s now hoping to hold his inaugural race in the fall of 2011, instead of this year — but he’s optimistic his race, if approved, would benefit local schools and businesses and become a hit with runners.
“Once we get approval for it, I think the event will be kind of an instant classic,” he said, noting that Santa Monica is already a favorite training ground for runners in the region.
Though he lives in Mar Vista, Cohen, a marathoner himself, said he almost always runs in Santa Monica.
There’s no date set for a route proposal to come before the City Council, but the idea has its fans at City Hall.
“We’d like to see if we can make this work, but ultimately we have to have a route that our public safety staff can support,” said Deputy City Manager Elaine Polachek.
An initial proposal to use Pacific Coast Highway for the course, she said, didn’t pass that test. But, in coming months, she said City Hall staff will resume discussions about the half-marathon, applying lessons learned from hosting a portion of the longer race to possible plans.
While a half-marathon seems less ambitious, she noted only about 3 miles of the L.A. Marathon were inside Santa Monica, so planning a 13-mile event’s course entirely within an 8-square mile city is in some respects more challenging.
Linda Gross, the executive director of the Santa Monica-Malibu Education Foundation, said the proposal has come at a time when her organization has an acute need.
Donations to the foundation’s existing endowments — which fund academic and arts programs — have fallen off by 50 percent in the past year and a half, she said, making a possible fundraising partnership to launch a new athletic endowment all the more necessary. Sports programs at local schools could face steep cuts because of the district’s current budget crisis.
“We’re excited about it. We think it’s a great opportunity to have a really homegrown Santa Monica-only event that would kind of be all about community,” Gross said of the proposed race.
It would be “a great way to have an annual event that sustains athletics in our schools,” she said.
nickt@www.smdp.com
