Post by TheShadow on Feb 4, 2007 9:35:00 GMT -5
www.centredaily.com/
You have 2 tickets to the Super Bowl and it's in the South Bay; what would it be like?
FANTASY GAME IN SANTA CLARA WOULD BE BIG FOR VALLEY CITIES -- AND EVEN FOR SAN FRANCISCO
By David Pollak
Mercury News
It's Super Bowl Sunday, 2014.
Hotels charging triple their usual rate are booked solid from San Francisco to Monterey. Great America has cranked up Psycho Mouse in winter for the first time. The NFC champs are staying across the street from the 49ers new stadium in Santa Clara. The AFC's best are in downtown San Jose. Corporate party tents dot the fairways on a nearby golf course.
With an extra 120,000 people arriving at the Bay Area's three airports, cabbies are working long shifts. And eight-tenths of a mile from the big game, Round Table manager Bonnie Heller has extra drivers working to move nearly 1,000 pizzas out the door -- three times the normal volume, ``delivering to the parking lots for tailgaters who run out of food.''
Timeout.
This is football fantasyland. The 49ers' new stadium exists only on an artist's drawing board. Months of political and financial wrangling lie ahead before ground can be broken on the $800 million project.
But as today's kickoff approaches for Super Bowl XLI in South Florida, consider what it would be like if the nation's biggest sporting event comes to Santa Clara.
For one thing, any future Northern California Super Bowl should be significantly different from the game's only previous visit. That was in 1985, when the 49ers beat the Miami Dolphins before 84,059 at Stanford Stadium -- the only Bay Area site big enough to meet NFL requirements. The game may have been played on the Peninsula, but nearly all of the sideshow took place in San Francisco.
Before Yahoo
The NFL's headquarters hotel? The Hyatt Regency on San Francisco's Embarcadero. The media center? The same. The league's traditional Friday night bash? At the Moscone Center.
But that was a different era -- before San Jose and Santa Clara each had their own convention centers, before hotel chains like the Fairmont, Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt Regency had a major presence in the South Bay, and long before Yahoo and eBay arrived on the scene.
As a tourist mecca, San Francisco still can count on a major chunk of the business tied to a Super Bowl that might come to Santa Clara. But this game would be more regional with the South Bay playing a bigger role.
``It's just a different day,'' said Dan Fenton, president of the San Jose Convention and Visitors Bureau. ``We didn't have the product then.''
Any gazing into the future won't have input from the one institution that matters the most -- the National Football League. The 49ers have dangled the prospect of a future Super Bowl in efforts to win public support in Santa Clara, but for now the league is mum.
``This is extremely premature and speculative,'' spokesman Brian McCarthy said. ``We would not want to even theorize with you.''
Regional approach
Today's game will give the Bay Area a glimpse of what may lie ahead beyond traffic tie-ups and a mad scramble for pricey tickets. This is the ninth time the game is being played in Miami, but it has a new geographic designation.
``The NFL identified it as South Florida's Super Bowl,'' said Nicki Grossman, president of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau, noting that events are spread over three counties: Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. ``We're probably the poster child for a regional approach.''
Nearly two-thirds of the 17,500 rooms reserved by the NFL for teams, sponsors and the media are in Broward County, not Miami-Dade, where the stadium is located.
Just as it would be in the Bay Area, the game site in South Florida is between the region's two largest cities. Dolphins Stadium is in Miami Gardens, near the line dividing two counties that usually vie for tourist dollars.
Host cities
Team hotels are magnets for visiting fans and corporate sponsors -- and it's not by accident that the Colts are staying in Fort Lauderdale and the Bears in Miami. The South Florida Super Bowl Host Committee, which put together the regional bid, receives public financial support from both counties.
While most of the host committee's $10 million budget for today's game comes from private sources, Miami-Dade contributed $1.2 million and Broward $700,000 -- nearly all of it from tourism-generated taxes. Even Palm Beach County pitched in $100,000, though it only got one official event in return. Beyond the money, counties and municipalities also agreed to provide police for traffic and crowd control.
Money matters, but size is critical in choosing team hotels. Kelly said the NFL required 450 rooms for each team, with another 450 in close proximity for friends and family. A place to train less than 20 minutes away also was important.
Using that standard in the Bay Area, one Super Bowl team could stay at the 501-room Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, across Tasman Drive from a new stadium and steps from the 49ers training facility. The other team could end up at the 805-room Fairmont in downtown San Jose and train at San Jose State University -- or, as Miami did in 1985, stay in Oakland and train at the Raiders facility in Alameda.
Miami-Dade and Broward counties also divvied up entertainment events. Taste of the Super Bowl, featuring chefs from all league cities, is in Fort Lauderdale; the NFL's official party is on Jungle Island, a spit of land between Miami and Miami Beach.
Still, all that extra business can have a downside.
A Hialeah Gardens wedding planner told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that the $139 rooms she had arranged a year ago at a Miami Beach hotel were abruptly canceled in December. The general manager belatedly realized it was Super Bowl weekend, when rooms were double the usual rate.
Back to the Bay Area
In 1985, Palo Alto ended up being a somewhat reluctant Super Bowl host. Because San Francisco wouldn't help out with police costs, Palo Alto even refused to contribute a requested $15,000 when organizers ran over budget.
Ron Garratt, Santa Clara's assistant city manager, worked in Palo Alto's finance department at the time. ``There was the big anticipation that there'd be lots of partying in Palo Alto -- and they all ended up in San Francisco,'' he said.
Palo Alto took a ``relatively minor'' financial hit, according to Councilman Larry Klein, who was mayor in 1985. ``Most of us in Palo Alto were glad to have the event, even though we didn't expect it to be a financial windfall -- and it wasn't.''
Garratt is among those who see a bigger role for the entire South Bay in future games.
San Francisco may be one of the world's great tourist destinations, but it's also 43 miles from the Santa Clara stadium site -- five times farther than downtown San Jose.
San Jose and the Santa Clara location have more than proximity connecting them. ``With light rail, people can move between the two venues easily,'' Garratt said.
At this point, tourism officials in San Francisco and the South Bay recognize they'd be competing for events and dollars, but no one seems too worried.
An event and vacation
``Unlike a regular season game, the Super Bowl is an event, and people who come to an event like that go for a week,'' said Joe D'Alessandro, president of the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau. ``They're likely to pick a place to stay for other things beyond convenience of the game. They're going to want to take advantage of everything else that's going on in the area.''
Steve Van Dorn, president of the Santa Clara Chamber of Commerce, sees his city offering more than just a game site and envisions concerts and other action at Great America even though the theme park usually closes in November.
``They'd be missing a big opportunity,'' he said.
And Van Dorn doesn't talk as if San Francisco is a rival to be feared.
``There'll be events in San Francisco as there are today when we have a convention. That's good,'' Van Dorn said. ``I think all our hotels will do fine and the restaurants will be full, but others will do fine, too.''