More info: the old Crown amps, of course, do not have auto-turn on. My solution was to run some dedicated circuits over to the amps (3 20amp circuits). As I said, they are in a 19" rack, in a basement storage room which shares a wall with my home theater. They amps are actually only ~5ft from the 990- just on the other side of the wall.
Anyway, each amp has it's own individual power outlet, which is individually switched. In my theater room, on the wall just above the 990, are 8 light switches (2 quad switch boxes)- so I can turn the equipment in the other room on/off without going back there. I actually need to be a little careful how I power things up; if the amps energize their high power circuits simultaneously, they will blow the breakers ;-). So, I just need to stage the power up over a few seconds.
There are 2 big pieces of PVC pipe (4" diameter I think) which go through the wall acting as conduit for the cabling. One for speaker wires from the amps, one for signal cables going to the amps from the 990.