I appreciate that you went and are notionally supportive, but most of your take strikes me as wrong. Younger and "cooler" versions of Kara and Des wouldn't have made a difference as elite athletes don't care who the organizer of the race is. Off the top of my head and not necessarily in this order, they want: (a) prize money, (b) pacing lights and pacers, (c) quality competition, (d) great weather, (e) good fit in their race schedule, (f) easy travel/accommodation, and (g) as a nice-to-have, crowd support. You seriously think that some 24 year-old superstar saw it was late 40s Kara reaching out and said nahh because she is isn't cool enough?
This race ended up checking all those boxes except quality competition and crowd support, but several of those were last-minute additions such as pacing lights and extent of prize money. Plus the schedule was affected by the late announcement of the race.
I think most of the issue with field quality was the late-start in announcing and organizing the race in addition to its lack of history. Now that it came off well logistically, is a known race and with the other factors, I think next year if they do it. would be much stronger in terms of field quality. Runners can plan for it and will be attracted to it.
As for crowd support, I think there's only going to be so much fan interest in this country in spending an evening to watch 2 x 10000 races and that's it. I think field quality is key to that even with free admission. I'm not sure what The Ten draws in terms of crowds, but it's not a lot. Payton Jordan back in the day didn't have big crowds either, and most of the crowd was friends and family of college runners.