Bracing for the Ballyhooed Super Bowl : Love It or Hate It, San Diego ‘Is Soon Going to Be on Display to the World’

It begins today, that curious cavalcade of hype, corporate extravagance, media overkill, technological wizardry, Chamber of Commerce chest-thumping, consumption, celebration and athletic deification called the Super Bowl.

It is at once intrinsically trivial--a sporting contest of running and throwing and tackling--and loaded with cultural meaning, a game that brings the nation to a halt and a fortune to a city.

For San Diego, which this year is host to the game for the first time, it’s all that and potentially much more, a landmark event, a high-water mark against which this burgeoning city from now on will measure itself.

“This is unlike any event that’s ever occurred here,” says G.E. (Vinny) Vinson, chairman of the board of Rosenfield-Vinson Advertising and founding president of the Holiday Bowl. “The World Series is a hell of an event . . . but for some reason the Super Bowl, with the media covering it and the interest around the country is just incredible.”

“There’s a thing about it and darn if I know what it is . . . it goes beyond money. It’s the most masterfully promoted event ever.”

The Washington Redskins football team arrives in San Diego tonight. By the time the curtain closes on the main attraction one week from today, this city of 1 million people--now the seventh largest in the country--will have witnessed first-hand some of the essence of what makes the Super Bowl the grandest American sports spectacle of all.

Unlike last year’s event, much of it swallowed by the megalopolis of Los Angeles, the Super Bowl is expected to dominate the more compact confines of central San Diego.

In many ways, the city’s civic and business leaders are looking at the Super Bowl--a term that not only defines the game but its many attendant activities--as a Super Convention.

Until this week, the biggest convention ever held in San Diego was in the late 1970s, when 16,000 Kiwanis Club International members descended on the city. The Super Bowl is five times larger than that.

A study commissioned by the San Diego Super Bowl Task Force, the group responsible for preparing the city for this week, estimates the city’s direct economic benefit as host of the game could reach as high as $141 million, but the city hopes for more--that the hoopla of the event will serve as one big commercial.

As with most commercials, the message is sublime.

“If there is an underlying objective of the task force,” says task force chairman Robert Payne, “it’s to promote San Diego as a destination resort.”

There are those who believe the Super Bowl might be the worst thing to have happened to San Diego. For them, the Super Bowl can’t make the sunshine any sunnier, won’t bring the beach any closer, or make the air any fresher.

Cat Out of the Bag

“San Diego is terrific because it’s somewhat of a secret. It’s Los Angeles without the lesser qualities of L.A. . . . the smog, the traffic,” said David Halberstam, the New York City-based author of several books, including some dealing with sports, who has visited the city frequently.

“It’s a wildly livable city. You don’t want to expose it to 1,000 reporters,” he said. “With luck, the game will be played and it will last about three hours and everyone will go home and the Chamber of Commerce will claim it’s a huge success and you won’t have another one for 10 years.”

For some, 10 years might be too soon.

While residents seem resigned to some inconvenience, there are those who believe they are being taken advantage of. They don’t buy the explanations that the inconveniences are outweighed by the benefits.

Most prominent among these residents are people living near the airport, where the late-night curfew on take-offs was lifted last week so that the squadron of up to 300 private jets expected for the game can leave the night after the game.

“I don’t blame the Super Bowl. What I’m angry about is the planning was so terribly mishandled,” said Nancy Palmtag, a Point Loma resident who lives under the flight path and spokeswoman of the Airport Noise Coalition. “Where was the planning to get 80,000 people in and out of the city? The fact is, they blew it and that should be a source of embarrassment to this city. They shoved it down our throats.”

Not only is the Super Bowl expected to dominate San Diego, but the city is playing the role of willing ingenue.

It wants the NFL to enjoy itself. It wants to be part of the Super Bowl rotation. It has paid about $2.3 million to accommodate the event.

“There’s no question about the prestige it brings the city,” says Mayor Maureen O’Connor. “It also gives us an opportunity to show off San Diego.”

It all begins with the media.

Jim Heffernan, the NFL’s public relations director, estimates the media army at about 2,300, including technicians, broadcasters, producers, writers, photographers and reporters. Of those, about 1,000 will be reporters.

An estimated 30 to 35 affiliated television stations are expected in town to do remotes back to their city--and all those remotes will be live from San Diego.

Cable News Network and ESPN are expected to build studios to do reports live from the city. All three morning shows on the networks--ABC, CBS and NBC--will be broadcasting from San Diego this week.

City on Display

“Your city is soon going to be on display to the world,” Bill Barron, general manager of NFL Properties, the league’s marketing, licensing and publishing arm, recently told members of the San Diego Advertising Club. “If (anything) happens, you’re bound to read about it.”

The event is so large that San Diego’s inventory of about 35,000 hotel rooms is not enough to handle the horde. Civic officials say that not only will most of the county’s hotel rooms be booked this week, but also 3,500 or so rooms in Tijuana, Orange County and Palm Springs will be used to handle the overflow.

For those who live in neighborhoods away from downtown, Mission Valley or the northern part of San Diego Bay, it will be entirely possible to live this week without ever knowing the Super Bowl is in town.

But for those who go to the airport or live near it, who use downtown streets or want their usual table at their favorite restaurant, the opposite will likely be true.

A steady round of daily parties--some official NFL or Super Bowl Task Force bashes and many more by people joining in the fun--is expected to stretch the city’s hotel and restaurants to the limit.

Venerable Lubach’s restaurant at 232 N. Harbor Drive is an example that is being repeated at well-known eateries throughout San Diego, from downtown to La Jolla.

The haunt of many old-line San Diegans, Lubach’s has been accepting dinner reservations for Super Bowl week since last May, most of them from out-of-town visitors.

The restaurant is booked from Thursday night through Saturday night, except for a handful of tables for couples, said Cindy Lubach, the restaurant’s banquet manager and granddaughter of its founder, Ray.

Among companies with reservations are Sports Illustrated, Subaru, CBS News and Eastman-Kodak. Not only does Lubach’s plan having its 220-person dining room at capacity, but it will also be using its 110-person banquet room for dining, a practice generally done only once a year on New Year’s Eve.

It probably will be difficult this week to call a taxi. Not only is San Diego’s fleet of about 900 cabs expected to inundated, but it will be necessary on Game Day to bring in taxis from El Cajon and Oceanside.

As many as 15,000 extra rental cars have been made available in San Diego this week, and image-conscious city officials are appealing to local residents to be extra patient with lost drivers.

Les Land, Super Bowl Task Force executive director, said: “You’ve heard of a tsunami? That’s what you are about to witness . . . but an organized tsunami.”

It’s no accident that Ronald Reagan ended his last two presidential campaigns in San Diego. The city is conservative.

The military, which in World War II and the years after transformed the city into a major Navy port, has a huge presence. Of the 2.2 million San Diego County residents, about 344,000 of them are either active military personnel, their dependents and families, or military retirees. The military, which pumps about $8 billion a year into the local economy, is second only to manufacturing as the area’s major industry.

A city of striking physical beauty, with rolling hills, miles of beaches, dramatic views of the bay and a benign climate, San Diego passed the 1 million population mark last year. It is growing at such a rate, and stretching the city’s ability to provide services to its new residents, that the question of growth and its implications dominates political debate at City Hall.

In 1986, the last year for which figures are available, 20,000 new people moved into San Diego. The county that year grew by 75,000 residents and the trend shows no signs of weakening. The city is the state’s second-largest.

San Diego is a young big city, and often recoils at any slight made to its image. The city slogan is “America’s Finest City” and, two weeks ago, civic leaders criticized as inappropriate 100 placards on city buses that were were a commentary on the city’s tourism industry. The placards, produced by three local artists, consisted of three photographs depicting the shadowly existence of illegal aliens in the city’s hotel and restaurant work force and were titled “America’s Finest Tourist Plantation.”

Looking for City’s Soul

The city’s metamorphosis, apparent in its burgeoning downtown skyline and aggressive can-do business attitude, has left some natives and old-timers questioning where the city’s soul lies. Neil Morgan, editor of The Tribune, the city’s afternoon newspaper, has written a daily column about local happenings and personalities since 1946. Last November, he wrote about San Diego after visiting Sydney, Australia:

“San Diego’s harbor is no less beautiful than Sydney’s. But it’s not as accessible or as inviting. Sure, there are handsome parks and walkways, part of the largess of a rich Port District. But they are not yet linked with a place of pride, a natural gathering site, a wellspring of civic identity. The new (San Diego) convention center is not likely to generate the sense of community that the Opera House provides on Sydney’s bayfront. We are still searching, in San Diego, for ourselves.”

While some boosters have suggested that the Super Bowl will begin a new era of civic achievement in San Diego, others say it is unlikely to make that much difference.

Bruce Ogilvie, a sports psychologist who has worked for 35 teams, including the Golden State Warriors, the Milwaukee Bucks, the Indiana Pacers, and the U.S. Olympic volleyball team, specializes in the research of high-level performance and performers.

A resident of San Jose, he said this about the Super Bowl: “All you have is a bunch of good-time Charlies putting on a spectacle, and that’s OK, because we need spectacles.

“But like every 4th of July, you wave your sparklers, booze it up and party for a day. I’m not knocking it, but it makes no profound statement about your city or mankind.”

One-hundred forty-one million dollars. That’s how much Super Bowl Task Force officials say San Diego stands to gain from the Super Bowl, money spent on a plethora of activities, on taxis, on meals, on rental cars, on a good time.

“The games have become anticlimactic . . . a three-hour pause in the activities,” said Leon Parma, a task force member and owner of one of San Diego’s largest liquor distributors, Coast Distributing. Of the 21 Super Bowls played, Parma has attended 18.

As much as the direct dollars and cents impact of the event, people like Parma are counting on using the Super Bowl as an opportunity to tout the city to thousands of business leaders expected in town. Their logic is that duly impressed visiting executives will think of San Diego at expansion time.

“The business sector will see San Diego . . . There will be more of them than have ever been put together by all the economic development efforts we’ve ever done, combined,” Parma said. “At last year’s Super Bowl, Lee Iacocca sat behind me. I can’t comprehend it, it’s an extraordinary opportunity.”

Promoting Tourism

With equal verve, city officials hope the Super Bowl will help buttress San Diego’s tourism industry, particularly in international markets such as Europe. Last year about 32 million tourists visited the city and the tourism accounted for $2.5 billion to the economy, making it San Diego’s third-largest industry.

“The business that will benefit the most (from the Super Bowl) is tourism,” says Dal Watkins, president of the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau. “We’re still not known internationally. We want to show case San Diego.”

Says Mayor O’Connor: “Tourism . . . is a clean industry. They (visitors) will come here for a week and they will leave and we can have our beautiful city back again. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the best type of industry the city can have.”

Despite all the civic enthusiasm, though, it’s nearly impossible to gauge the impact of a single large event like the Super Bowl on long-term tourism and population growth. That was the conclusion of a study called “Causes of Growth” done by the San Diego Assn. of Governments, the area’s agency for regional government. Between 1980-86, the county grew by 344,000 people, according to the study, but only about 13% of that growth, or 46,000 people, was related to the effect of tourism or boosterism.

“What effect does the Super Bowl have versus a four-page color spread in Fortune (magazine)?” said Linda Martin, co-chairman of San Diegans for Limited Growth, the group sponsoring a restrictive anti-growth initiative.

While Martin would like to see more studies done on what events like the Super Bowl and the upcoming America’s Cup regatta do to influence growth, she is not about to become the “grinch who stole the Super Bowl.”

“There probably is a down side to the Super Bowl. But it’s also a great deal of fun . . . having your city in the spotlight,” she said. “I’m like the next guy . . . like a little kid. I grew up at a time when you were proud of the community you lived in . . . of wanting the best for it. That’s what the limited-growth movement is all about . . . it’s special here and we want to keep it that way.”

Times staff writer Greg Johnson contributed to this story.