Show Goes On for Inaugural Fetes

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 25, 2000 | by Catherine Edwards

Despite the contested election results in Florida, hoteliers, caterers, party planners, retailers and the political parties now are preparing for the swearing of the 43rd president.

Ric Marino of Washington-based Well Done Catering laughs about the menus he is preparing for inaugural festivities in January 2001. "We know we are serving barbecue," he says, "but the question is whether we use the Texas recipe or make the kind that folks from Tennessee like."

As Insight goes to press, the presidential inauguration is turning into a birthday party with no birthday boy. The streamers are up and the cake is ready to be cut, but there's just no one to sing "Happy Birthday" to. Washington-area businesses that aim to service and profit from the inaugural events know that on Jan. 20, 2001, someone will walk or ride down Pennsylvania Avenue and take his seat in the Oval Office. But these party planners have been in a holding pattern, unable to finalize details until they could be sure who won. As with all big events, planning, managing and servicing something like this takes time, and it is time of which they have been deprived.

"We are going ahead with two scenarios," says Daniel Fitzgerald, the director of catering at the Hay-Adams Hotel, just across Lafayette Park from the White House. Inauguration Day will be the busiest this year for the Hay-Adams, as this most elegant of Washingtons hotels not only is the closest to the White House but offers one of the best spots for watching the parade.

Fitzgerald and his catering teams at the hotel will be serving not only hotel guests but 1,000 others at five different locations that day, mainly for corporations whose events are going ahead regardless of who wins. "A problem is that these corporations are likely to change their guest lists depending on who wins and that could affect our planning," Fitzgerald tells Insight.

Design Cuisine of Arlington, Va., catered the inaugural luncheon on Capitol Hill four years ago. This year it has been going through the bidding process again to try to get the job. Whoever nabs the business still may have to wait until there is a president to coordinate a menu. "If [Al] Gore and [Joe] Lieberman take it, we will have the dietary concerns of Mr. Lieberman to consider" notes Design Cuisine's Bill Hummer.

Normally the president-elect has chosen his transition team, announced Cabinet positions and put in place the Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC) to plan events for Jan. 20 by the end of November. The PIC usually has 10 weeks to plan more than a dozen balls with more than 70,000 invitations to guests. This year the PIC may not have even four weeks to plan these grand affairs.

That certainly could throw a spanner in the works for ladies buying gowns. Most ball gowns and shoes are stocked after Thanksgiving but, as Insight goes to press, the buying has not yet begun. A popular shop for the elegant, hip and trendy is Ellie at the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City in Arlington, Va., just a subway stop outside Washington.

"In 1996 the inauguration was busier for us than Christmas," says shop owner Terrie Magarino, who opened Ellie with her husband, J.R. Sanchez, five years ago. This year they expect even more of a crunch as women receive last-minute invitations.

"We will have seamstresses working overtime to accommodate dress-alteration requests. We might even be able to turn dresses over in a couple of hours," Magarino tells Insight. "In the last-minute rush to buy the perfect gown, some women attending the same balls might end up with the same dress as another lady present." But, even here, Ellie is there to help the last-minute frantic ballgoer. "This could easily happen and would be awful, so we are going to keep a list of what person bought what dress to go to which affair," Magarino says.

What if angry party partisans decide to boycott inaugural festivities should their man not win? "I'd hate to think that would happen," says Magarino. "The only thing that would truly affect sales is if we don't have a president by that time. Regardless of people's political persuasion, we want them to look really nice and are going to do what we can to make that happen."

But, whether it is a Republican president or a Democrat, shopowners, caterers, limousine services and hotels are looking forward to a quadrennial business boom. Not for attribution, Insight is told, Republicans tend to spend more on food and parties in general. And, as in the past, Washington businesses expect to benefit more if the candidate from out of town wins and brings in a new crop of people from his home state.

Washington hotels look forward to being near capacity as guests come to town to celebrate. At Ronald Reagan's first inaugural in 1981, hotels were 93.8 percent full for the four days of official celebrations. When he was re-elected in 1984, with his 8,000 or so closest political friends having settled into jobs and homes in the Washington area, the need for hotel rooms was not so great. Hotel occupancy during the 1985 inaugural weekend was down to 78.9 percent. Though he was by now a local resident, that figure went up to 85.9 percent when the elder Bush took the oath of office. But when Bill Clinton and his crowd came in from Arkansas in 1993, hotels enjoyed a surge in occupancy to 91.1 percent. No doubt the governor of Texas would bring similar numbers.