City Intends to Cash In Big on Super Bowl : Revenues: Officials hope visitors will stay in town and spend millions on pregame entertainment.

In playing host to four previous Super Bowl games, the Rose Bowl’s hometown seemed like a hayseed at a party for jet-setters, city officials say. The NFL championship games were played in what was often portrayed as a dowdy little suburb, but a glamorous build-up took place elsewhere.

“There was all this snickering about Pasadena’s little old lady image and about the football game invading this quiet little town,” Mayor Rick Cole recalled.

More important, out-of-towners with Super Bowl tickets spent most of their pregame entertainment money in Los Angeles, city officials added.

For Super Bowl XXVII, however, Pasadena finally becomes a full partner in the event, with opportunities to cash in on the pregame hype and to polish the city’s image as a fun, cultured place.

Those are important aims for a medium-sized city struggling to balance its budget, city officials say.

Minneapolis, which hosted last year’s Super Bowl, estimated that the event pumped about $100 million into the local economy.

If Pasadena can skim off even a modest portion of that kind of money, the city could get through some dangerous fiscal straits ahead, say city finance officials, who are estimating a budget shortfall of more than $10 million next year.

“The Super Bowl has been such a lucrative event for the major cities of the country,” said City Councilman William E. Thomson Jr., who has represented the council in negotiations to bring the game to Pasadena.

As Sunday’s big game approaches, a tent city around the Rose Bowl is hopping with pregame activities, Pasadena hotels and restaurants overflow with customers, city theaters and museums brim with special events, and city finance officers await--with open arms--the inevitable infusions of new revenues.

“It all becomes a showcase for our community as a dynamic, multicultural place that people ought to visit, not just because of a football game,” Cole said.

Right now, the city is the site of “Pasadena Celebrates,” a series of entertainment events designed to highlight the city’s “cultural diversity and heritage,” according to its planners.

The events include, among others, a Liza Minnelli concert at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium and a Senior PGA tournament at Brookside Park on Friday. There will also be a concert by the Kodo-Heartbeat Drummers of Japan at Caltech’s Beckman Auditorium on Friday and a street festival in Old Pasadena on the weekend, featuring Dixieland jazz, reggae and “oldies” musicians.

“This was an opportunity to bring two seemingly unconnected elements together--sports and the arts,” said Denise Nelson Nash, the city’s arts commissioner and chairwoman of the series.

At the same time, The NFL Experience, a kind of football theme park, kicks off today in the tent city in Brookside Park, south of the Rose Bowl. Here, participants can test their football skills--throwing passes, kicking extra points, catching punts--or just meet football celebrities and learn about NFL history and the behind-the-scenes construction of a network broadcast.

All of this will bring thousands of visitors to the city.

“The hope is that people staying in Pasadena hotels--or any place else--will perhaps go to the NFL Experience, come back for ‘Pasadena Celebrates,’ eat at our restaurants and generally spend money,” Thomson said.

Last year, thousands visited Minneapolis just for the thrill of being in the Super Bowl city. Planners here are optimistic that money-spending visitors, generating sales tax and transient occupancy tax for the city, will jam Pasadena this year.

The rules of the Super Bowl financing game have changed radically since 1987, when Pasadena last was the site of the event, Thomson said.

In those days, the National Football League paid a lump sum in rent for the stadium, about $1 million, and gave the host cities most of the concessions and parking fees.

But so lucrative have the games become for host cities that the NFL now demands the stadium rent-free. Most of Pasadena’s profits come from its share of a block of 2,500 game tickets given by the NFL to the Los Angeles Super Bowl Host Committee.

The city expects to make $1 million from the tickets (face value $175), which are being sold legally for as much as $1,750 apiece. The NFL is also chipping in from $80,000 to $100,000 to local charities, from an admissions fee on NFL Experience tickets, and about $65,000 in permanent improvements to the Rose Bowl.

Pasadena is much better prepared for a major sports event than it was in 1987, city officials say.

The 71-year-old Rose Bowl has been spruced up with the addition of an $11.5-million press box, complete with luxury suites and room for 1,100 media representatives.

Two new hotels have opened since 1987--the Doubletree Hotel and the rebuilt Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel--bringing the city’s total to 23, with 2,275 rooms.

There are dozens of new restaurants--bringing the city’s total to more than 250--and Old Pasadena has taken off as a hot new entertainment center.

But even with all of its amenities, Pasadena won this year’s Super Bowl game on a fluke, city officials concede. The game was originally planned for Phoenix, but the NFL withdrew after Arizona refused to honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday (Arizona voters have since voted to observe the holiday). The Rose Bowl beat out San Diego after Pasadena promised to have the press box ready by game time.

“But the real clincher was the Rose Bowl’s seating capacity,” Deputy Finance Administrator Paul Karsten said.

The Rose Bowl, which holds the Super Bowl attendance record of 103,985--set in 1980--offered 30,000 more seats than San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium.

With all of the stadium-area activities filling parking areas near the Rose Bowl, parking on Sunday promises to be a big problem. Police advise those attending the game not to try to park in the limited space around the stadium.

The city has set up park-and-ride areas around the city, with shuttle buses carrying ticket holders to the stadium.

The parking areas include Union Street and Pasadena Avenue, Green Street and Delacey Avenue, Raymond Avenue and Green Street, Fair Oaks Avenue and Union Street, Raymond Avenue and Union Street and Green Street and Marengo Avenue.

The Southern California Rapid Transit District will also be running buses to the Rose Bowl from various spots in downtown Los Angeles.