Houston -- Ready for the Super Bowl?
An estimated 130,000 visitors will flock here for the Feb. 1 Super Bowl, which is just the kind of shindig Houston needs to get past its embarrassing corporate energy scandals and get on with the lucrative business of being a gracious hostess.
But Southern hospitality has run smack into the grim realities of municipal mayhem.
The modern 24-floor Hilton Americas Hotel -- officially designated Super Bowl Headquarters -- remains under construction. Sections of the city’s downtown look like they’ve been burrowed by the gophers in “Caddyshack,” with more than half the streets torn up for repairs. And a 250-foot fountain at the new pedestrian plaza won’t be completed until New Year’s Day, leaving workers less than four weeks to finish the light-rail system that passes over the fountain’s base.
“We’ve taken a few hits in the past few years,” said Chuck Watson, chairman of the Super Bowl Host Committee and former chief executive and chairman of energy giant Dynegy Inc. There was the national scrutiny of Houston’s environmental record during the presidential election, and then the energy industry collapse in 2001. “My hope was that we could put Houston’s best foot forward.”
In fact, Super Bowl XXXVIII is supposed to mark the beginning of its recovery from bad economic times.
The pressure on event planners to throw a fabulous party for out-of-towners is a departure for a city that long prided itself on marching to its own drum. It used to be that price per barrel, not parties for out-of-towners, was all that mattered here.
In 1981, the energy sector employed 86% of the city’s residents. But over the last two decades the city has diversified. Today, the energy sector employs only 48%, a large enough population of workers to be affected when monster companies such as Dynegy, Enron Corp. and El Paso Corp. run into serious trouble, as they have in the last two years, but not such a complete monopoly that the city can ignore investing in other sectors.
As Houston has diversified, it has become more like the rest of America. Reflecting a national trend, unemployment rates here soared from 3.7% in February 2001 to 6.7% this summer.
“We used to say, ‘If it’s good for Boston, it’s bad for Houston,’ ” said Stephen Klineberg, a Rice University sociology professor who has overseen 22 annual Houston area surveys that gather information on residents’ attitudes about everything from traffic to crime to the economy. “Houston is no longer countercyclical. Now, it’s locked into the global and national economies, and since 2000, unemployment is growing, deficits are increasing.”
Critics Don’t See Profits
Whether playing host to the Super Bowl is a sound strategy for staying alive in that global and national economy remains to be seen, and Houston has plenty of critics who have dedicated themselves to fighting projects that were pitched as image makers.
“This is the Potemkin Village approach for Houston, with a facade of houses with flowers out front,” said David Hutzelman founder of a political action committee that opposed the light-rail project.
Victor A. Matheson, professor of economics at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., says it’s worse than that. He thinks cities all across the United States have become so enamored with the profits promised by the National Football League that they spend an inordinate amount of resources in an effort to attract the organization and satisfy their commitment to it. He analyzed revenue brought into cities during Super Bowls from 1970 to 2000 and concluded that the event typically draws $45 million -- not the $275 million to $300 million the NFL claims.
“The NFL dangles this carrot of ‘build a new stadium and we’ll give you the Super Bowl,’ ” Matheson said. “Based on the NFL numbers, it seems like the trade-off of getting the Super Bowl is a free stadium, but most economists would say that’s wildly exaggerated.”
His research findings, however, have fallen on deaf ears, as city officials insist Super Bowl XXXVIII is a well-timed opportunity to begin remaking the city’s national reputation while taking concrete steps to improving local services.
And from a more nostalgic, if not necessarily rational, viewpoint, they say February’s Super Bowl is retribution for a city that lost its beloved Oilers in 1996 to Nashville. (The team was renamed the Tennessee Titans).
For three years, the largest city in Texas -- a state where football is more of a religion than a spectator sport -- had no pro football. It wasn’t until a local businessman offered $700 million for the expansion team that the NFL agreed to bestow upon the city the Houston Texans, the League’s 32nd franchise. That deal trumped two other offers originating out of Southern California, one by Hollywood mogul Michael Ovitz and another by Ed Roski and billionaire Eli Broad.
The new team was welcomed with open arms, and earlier this month more than 30,000 fans bought tickets to watch a pre-season scrimmage. Now, the thinking goes, if visitors can catch a whiff of local football devotion, it may be the first step in restoring luster to Houston.
Hotels have successfully demanded a minimum four-day stay for the Super Bowl, which means visitors will be a captive audience, and the city aims to show off its upcoming role in other national sporting events, such as the Master’s Tennis Cup here in November 2004 as well as Major League Baseball’s All-Star game next season.
“The city is going to put itself in a brand-new position. We’ll be ready,” said Jordy Tollett, president of the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors’ Bureau. “You won’t even recognize it.”
So far, that much is certain. The artists’ rendering of the light-rail system, for example, bears little resemblance to the reality that is Houston today. A few blocks away, bar and restaurant owners are trying to cope with the construction that they hope will help cure Houston’s economic slump.
‘Don’t Have a Sidewalk’
At the Flying Saucer Draught Emporium, situated on what would ordinarily be a beautifully accessible corner in the city’s downtown historic district, a muddy, wooden plank connects the sidewalk to the bar’s entrance. The Flying Saucer opened in August 2000, and four weeks later its front doors were nearly hidden behind dozens of orange plastic cones and blinking sawhorses.
“It’s getting close to being finished, but we don’t have a sidewalk, just a wooden plank bridge. They better have it down in time for the Super Bowl,” said Jeff Mickel, general manager. “We have between 75 to 150 people at our busiest. Everyone’s pretty much suffering. The hope is that money’s already invested, and you might as well stick it out.”
Officials are salivating at the prospect of the Super Bowl’s estimated $275 million in revenue during the 10 days leading up to the coin toss. About $91 million of that will be profit, Tollett said. Even though Reliant Stadium seats only 69,000 fans, an additional 60,000 visitors will be watching the game in local restaurants, bars and beauty parlors (the overwhelming majority of Super Bowl ticket holders are men, but plenty of women come for the surrounding festivities).
“This is not about a football game,” said the Host Committee’s Watson, who is a minority owner of the Houston Texans football team. “It’s not about four- or five-day hotel stays. It’s about the long-term economic viability impact on a city, about the branding and credibility that lingers far beyond the two weeks that everybody’s here.”
In 2002, 86.8 million television viewers watched the Super Bowl, staged in New Orleans, according to Nielsen Media Research. This year, the TV rating service estimates, 88.6 million tuned in to see the game in San Diego. Houston officials say anything approaching that in February 2004 would mean that an enormous swath of the country could get a look at the city, including some people who may be contemplating a move or an investment in a Houston-based business. That’s why city officials are scrambling to complete expensive renovations, or at least major cosmetic overhauls, for the big event.
Along the highways that lead into town from George Bush Intercontinental Airport and the smaller Houston Hobby Airport, the Texas Department of Transportation and Harris County, which encompasses Houston, are planting more than 20,000 trees. It’s an effort to soften the aesthetics of highways lined with strip malls, gun loan shops, parrot stores and mattress discounters.
City officials promise that once visitors are inside the city limits, they’ll see a finished Hilton, fountain and light-rail project.
As for the downtown roadwork, they say that will be done, too, even if it means patching streets and then tearing them up again after the fans leave.
Houston doesn’t intend to fumble one of the most profitable weeks of the year.
“Houston is very aware that if it’s going to be viable in the 21st century, it’s got to have a more attractive image,” Klineberg said. “Part of the gearing up for the Super Bowl -- in terms of efforts to revitalize downtown, control pollution, build a light-rail system -- that’s all part of a sense that we need to change our image. Houston needs to be a place where people want to live.”
