News
Super Bowl XLV
February 2, 2011
| It's third down and inches 'til Super Bowl XLV comes to JerryWorld and some 150,000 visitors flood the Metroplex to spend money and enjoy Texas hospitality. DFW is en fuego, with ESPN taking over downtown Fort Worth, cheeseheads in Irving, and terrible towels in Cowtown. We're dedicating this entire issue to the quirks that having a Super Bowl in town bring to CRE. | |
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| Fort Worth?s Sundance Square has been home to ESPN's production HQ during the week-long build up. More than 80 hours of ESPN TV coverage (plus ESPN Radio and multimedia content) began Monday. We snapped The Herd with Collin Cowherd—what a great name for Cowtown—during his ESPN-U show. Sundance Square developer Ed Bass says this is one of the biggest broadcasting opportunities the area has ever hosted. ESPN built a large outdoor set in front of the Chisholm Trail mural with separate ESPN radio sets nearby. Among the ESPN shows broadcasting from Sundance Square: Mike & Mike in the Morning, SportsCenter, NFL Live, and a special three-hour edition of Sunday NFL Countdown on Super Bowl Sunday. | |
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| If you want the privilege of hosting ESPN, it helps to ask. Sundance Square CEO/prez Johnny Campbell tells us he was part of a team that pitched downtown to ESPN, and they were told no other entity approached them in this fashion. "All ESPN said they needed was the foot traffic and crowds to be engaged with the community and the vibrancy of Sundance Square has really paid off, he tells us. The group of business leaders, including Ed Bass, Mayor Mike Moncrief, Goff Capital managing partner John Goff, and FW CVB CEO David DuBois, had a short-term goal of "drawing traffic to our merchants," Johnny tells us. "The long-term strategy was to put Fort Worth on the map on a more regional and national level." Multiple sets, from the TV broadcasts to the local 103.3 (we can't wait for Overreaction Monday with Randy Galloway) were spread out around the Chisholm Trail mural parking lot with lots of security (including the FWPD Mounted Patrol). | |
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| If you saw a big flounce of hair getting in the elevator at The Omni Fort Worth (pictured), you may have spotted Troy Palomalu. TheSteelers are calling the Cowtown hotel home. Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce EVP David Berzina tells us that taking on an integral role in the Super Bowl festivities not only has the obvious retail and service sector implications, but it is the opportunity to make afavorable first-hand impression to ?our new guests and new friends that we're most excited about.? | |
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| The Omni Mandalay in Irving (pictured) plays host to the Packers. According to a new ULI report, cities like Irving may feel the economic boost of the Super Bowl years later. It points to themultiple advantages gained by cities and nations hosting an international event, with individual case studies including Barcelona(Summer Olympics 1992), Paris (FIFA World Cup 1998) and Turin(Winter Olympics 2006). The infrastructure and amenity requirements of the event that are also useful for the region and the boost in tourism are beneficial on their own and lead to other types of investment and trade opportunities. | |
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| Everyone loved seeing the massive building graphics during NBA All-Star week, so DFW had to go even bigger for the Super Bowl, right? Downtown Dallas has been lit in blue this week, rivaling downtownFort Worth?s red scheme. (Did you notice that before we told you, or has the snow kept you home glued to the Food Network?) Participating properties are doing everything from changing existing lights to the NFC blue, to creating exciting one-time-only uplighting treatments, the folks at Downtown Dallas Inc. tell us. The still under-construction Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge (pictured), which will connect downtown Dallas to West Dallas over the Trinity River when it opens in October, joined in on the fun Monday night, when local officials and the Trinity Trust Foundation leadership pulled the lever on new lighting. | |
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| A Bisnow buddy, Tammy Jones (editor of the Kennedale Newspaper) snapped this of Cowboys Stadium last week, as the finishing touches were put on JerryWorld. Super Bowl events are going on all over the Metroplex, like the transformation of Aloft Dallas into the Bud Light hotel. (Were you wondering, too, which hotel it was after seeing all the billboards?) There's the NFL Experience at the Dallas Convention Center. If you're all about the Tori Burch or Jimmy Choo shoes, you could check out the NFL Players? Wives Banquet/ Fashion Show at the Fairmont Dallas on Friday (benefiting St. Jude's). And, for the hipper crowd, there's P. Diddy?s Super Bowl Grand Finale Party at the Palladium Ballroom on Sunday. | |
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| We stimulated the economy on Monday at the Dallas Cowboys Pro Shop in Sundance Square (that's what we call dropping cash for a Super Bowl t-shirt). After Monday, it's been three straight days offreezing temps (today's high: 27) and a day without DART rail,rolling power outages, and 800 canceled flights out of DFW on Tuesday. But, temps for Super Bowl weekend will be in the 50s. Still looking for tickets? We hear you can buy 'em for $200 at Ticketmaster if you want to stand outside the stadium. Seriously. Open-market tickets can be bought at the NFL Ticket Exchange, too. Wanna take a guess at the price? Cheapest is $2,400. Top of the line: $23,370. A piece. | |
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| When it comes to picking a winner, the experts at JLL claim they can successfully select Sunday?s champ by analyzing the CRE climate in each team?s hometown. (Pictured is JLL exec chairman and two-time Super Bowl champ Roger Staubach and his son and JLL SVP Jeff Staubach.) JLL?s analysis: teams based in cities with a higher percentage of vacant office space have won the Lombardi Trophy nearly two-thirds of the time since 2000. Roger says as a student of football and CRE, the vacancy rate hypothesis is the real deal. So congrats, Green Bay! As of Jan. 1, the office vacancy rate in Pittsburgh held steady at 12.1% (one of the lowest nationwide) while Green Bay reported vacancy of 18.9%, pointing to the likelihood of the first Packers Super Bowl title since 1997. Roger, who led the Cowboys to victories in Super Bowl VI and Super Bowl XII, denies that this year's prediction is at all related to the fact that he lost two Super Bowls (X and XIII) at the hands of the Steelers in the 1970s. |
