THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, November 1, 1994 TAG: 9411010427
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C01 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM ROBINSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 120 lines
Mark Garcea spent the better part of 20 years building an electronics company that employs 400 people, grosses more than $20 million in annual sales and made him the most anonymous, self-made millionaire in Virginia Beach.
Finally, two years ago, it was time for some fun. Since then, two local pro sports franchises have gained a welcome, well-heeled, patron.
When out-of-towner Ken Young arrived in 1992 trying to drum up investors to buy into the Norfolk Tides, Garcea, now 38, stepped away from his grindstone and became Young's White Knight - the first and ultimately largest local individual contributor to the deal at more than $500,000.
To that, baseball fans and area business people answered as one - ``Who?''
``He's known up and down the East Coast by the people he sells to, but he's not out in the local business community,'' says Page Johnson, Garcea's former accountant and present business partner/adviser. ``Mark's a very simple man, actually. You'd never know he was a millionaire - if you didn't know it.''
The teaming with Young was Garcea's entry into a higher profile life he says he didn't necessarily want but doesn't particularly reject. It also whet his appetite for more sporting ventures, in that the electronics firms, office buildings, diagnostic centers and hotel he owns don't hit home runs, score goals or make thousands of spectators holler.
He does own a jet, though. That'll get you going.
So it wasn't as much a surprise last summer when the people who were struggling to prop up the failing Hampton Roads Hurricanes soccer franchise turned their eyes to Garcea, and Garcea bailed them out.
By July of the Hurricanes' debut season, the United States Interregional Soccer League was at the doorstep, and in fact had stripped owner Ellis Gillespie of the team for financial default.
Garcea, an over-30 soccer player and fan, was on stand-by, ready to open his checkbook and save the franchise on the league's promise that he and Johnson would assume ownership, though losses of up to $50,000 are expected this season.
Thus were the Hampton Roads Mariners born, and local pro soccer lives where amateur soccer thrives.
``We may have been able to approach several people as investors to keep it going,'' says Mariners general manager Shawn McDonald, a Hurricanes assistant coach last year. ``But I'm not sure that would've happened. There's the very strong possibility that Mark saved it.''
Rather than a savior, Garcea would prefer being called an opportunist, in the most noble sense. He provides opportunities, he says, for hundreds of workers, and he relishes giving within his community and to his Catholic church. But he also seeks out openings in various fields.
To Garcea, helping local sports take off is simply a new and pleasant diversion for a guy who was fired from his job at a gas station 20 years ago for washing his car on company time.
``I'd worked and worked day in and day out, always for something that was an investment,'' says Garcea, whose first capitalist ventures were morning and afternoon paper routes as a teenager. ``I felt like I could make some money (with the Tides), it would probably be a good investment, and at the same time I could have fun with it. I could give something back to the community.
``I like being around the public, I like doing things for the public and I like to create a good image. It was just very appealing.''
GARCEA TOOK THE TIDES' PLUNGE at Johnson's urging and ponied up enough money to earn the title of vice president and a seat on the board of directors. Johnson, who used to audit the Tides' books and is a minor investor in the team, says the time and opportunity were perfect for Garcea to be nudged into the sports spotlight.
Garcea's remarkably successful business, M&G Electronics, primarily makes harness wiring sets for boats, lawn tractors and heavy equipment, was in peak condition, with savvy assistants running the plant. Financially, he was set for life. There were other avenues to explore, for fun and profit. And Triple-A baseball, thanks in large part to Harbor Park, was going to be a good one, Johnson believed.
``I told him I thought it was important to get his name out in public, so people knew who he was and what he was about,'' Johnson says. ``I think he's got a lot to be proud of. But I don't think (the attention) was as big a thing to him.''
Garcea's ego apparently doesn't rule his life. He was born in Norfolk, raised in the Thoroughgood section of Virginia Beach, graduating from Cox High in 1974, and carved out a mountain of wealth.
But his file in this newspaper's library contains just a single story about him, from 1985, when he battled the Virginia Beach Wetlands Board to build a house over a sand dune at Croatan Beach. He won.
Yet Garcea isn't exactly running from the newfound attention. He has license plates that read ``Charisma'' and ``Tides VP.'' And there are rumblings about how Garcea got into soccer to run his own show, that he was miffed last year over Young getting all the Tides glory. Especially when team president Young was mistakenly referred to as the ``owner'' in news stories.
``When you have friends and family in the community and they know you've made a major investment in something, people tend to laugh,'' said Garcea, who is single. ``They think it's find of funny - `Yeah, I thought you were an owner?' As far as spokesperson, that's Ken. He's done a good job with it, and that's what he really wants to do. He brought the deal to the table. If that's what he really wants to devote his life to, that's fine.
``Maybe early on that bothered me, but it doesn't anymore. I'm an easygoing guy.''
AN IRONIC TWIST to Garcea's sports involvement is that, depending on how big the Mariners get, he may theoretically have two investments competing for fans and attention.
Garcea says he doesn't look at it that way. He says he won't schedule any of the Mariners' 14 to 18 home games when the Tides are at Harbor Park. In fact, he plugged the Tides and even had their mascot Rip Tide at a couple late-season Hurricanes' games last summer.
Young just says he wants to keep an eye on it.
``As it grows, it could become a concern competitively,'' he says.
If it does, Garcea might be among the most surprised people. Certainly, he wants the Mariners to go and go well, and you don't become a millionaire by doing things half-heartedly. But that's not the point, Garcea says.
The record notes that, whatever his motivations and goals, he helped jump-start the Tides' huge success and gave a pup of a soccer club a second chance. In a sports community long ignored by local moneyed individuals, Garcea has earned his higher profile. ILLUSTRATION: Staff color photo by JIM WALKER
A self-made millionaire from Virginia Beach, Mark Garcea invested in
the Tides and saved a failing pro soccer team.
by CNB