City Gearing Up for World Cup Kickoff : Commerce: Officials are working on everything from a street festival to security measures for the estimated 800,000 visitors. The soccer championship is seen as an economic boon to the area.
It’s six months until the first 1994 World Cup game, but Pasadenans can already hear the dull roar of the approaching soccer extravaganza.
Eight of the competition’s 52 games are scheduled for the Rose Bowl, including a semifinal, the third-place consolation match and the final, the game that will determine the world champion of soccer.
Promoters estimate a viewing audience equivalent to one-third of the human race will see all or part of the matches, with about 1.5 billion watching the final alone.
This, city officials say, is shaping up to be a very big deal.
“It means new fame for Pasadena,” said Vice Mayor Kathryn Nack. “The economics of it are that billions of dollars are going to change hands, a good part of it in Pasadena.”
“For six weeks, the city is going to be owned by the World Cup,” added City Councilman Isaac Richard.
City officials and business people have been planning for a year for the arrival of more than 800,000 ticket holders from mid-June to the final on July 18.
Pasadena police are traveling abroad to learn how to ward off the violence that has plagued soccer matches. City Hall planners are preparing to turn the city into a monthlong festival, and business groups are getting ready for a forecast $4-billion buying and spending bonanza.
An army of volunteers--guides, messengers, chauffeurs and translators--is springing up in the Los Angeles region. Organizers say its ranks will eventually number 1,400.
World Cup U.S.A., the organizing company for the games, has already completed $1.5 million in improvements on the Rose Bowl, giving the stadium’s gridiron an additional 40 feet in width to accommodate an official soccer field.
For local planners, the idea is to use the tidal wave of publicity to promote Pasadena, said Denise Nelson-Nash, the city’s arts director as well as the host committee’s World Cup coordinator.
“We want to get the word out about Pasadena,” Nelson-Nash said. “It’s a great place to work, live and play.”
The city gets $2 million in rent for use of the Rose Bowl, as well as a portion of sales and transit occupancy tax from all the visitors to the city.
“There won’t be a hotel room available in the city for a full month,” Nack said. “I imagine that people will be fighting to find parking spots so they can get out of their cars and go spend money.”
But those internationally televised shots of the Rose Bowl during the games should give Pasadena long-term benefits, said Mayor Rick Cole.
He described the effect as a kind of worldwide buzz. “The games will broaden and deepen that international perception (of Pasadena) for years to come,” Cole said. “Some kid growing up in Nigeria, aged 9, will watch the final on television, then , at age 19 , come to Caltech, saying ‘Yeah, Caltech’s in Pasadena where they held the World Cup.’ That’s the kind of thing that will happen.”
To make sure the publicity concerns a sporting event and not terrorism or soccer violence, Pasadena police officials are working with 51 police and investigation agencies, including national police from the home countries of visiting teams, as well as every regional and national law enforcement organization.
“There’s a whole different mentality about soccer in other countries,” said police Chief Jerry Oliver. “Their cultures are not nearly as violent as ours on a day-to-day basis. But when it comes to soccer, they live and breathe it.”
Oliver was in Buenos Aires last month for a qualifying match between Argentina and Australia.
“About 50 people in the stands were injured when, during the exuberance of the match, the crowd decided to do something called the avalanche,” Oliver said. “Everybody started falling forward until they crushed the people in the front rows against a barricade.”
The trip was one of several that Oliver and members of his staff have taken to see how police in other nations keep the lid on volatile crowds.
Police officials are heartened that England, whose soccer fans have a reputation for violent behavior, did not qualify for next year’s matches.
The Rose Bowl’s distance from the home countries, together with its relative inaccessibility to the more fanatical soccer followers, also works in favor of the police, said Police Commander Mary Schander. “Getting from one point to the next is a little more difficult than a quick boat ride across the English Channel,” she said.
Police plan to impose tight restrictions on the sale of alcohol on game days and ban virtually all vehicles around the Rose Bowl, except for shuttle buses and VIP cars.
It has not been determined how many officers will be assigned to the Rose Bowl on game days. “But I would speculate that it will be substantially higher than what we use for a Super Bowl,” said Lt. Roger Kelley, coordinator of the security effort.
The Rose Bowl could host not only premiere soccer players, like Argentina’s Diego Maradona, Germany’s Thomas Hassler and Italy’s Nicola Zanone, but also foreign dignitaries and even heads of state--posing tough security challenges, police officials say.
But the city was not chosen as the site of SoccerFest, the theme park with soccer clinics and demonstrations, soccer stars giving autographs and posing for pictures, historical displays, games and films.
Instead, Pasadena is planning its own festival outside the Rose Bowl to match the event. The city’s parks and streets will be populated with jazz bands and oldies-but-goodies singers. The Rockettes, the Pasadena Symphony and a parade of comic book figures will all make appearances in Pasadena during the games.
The Rose Bowl itself plans an “interactive soccer clinic” for youngsters, cultural activities and a commercial area, perhaps sponsored by a sporting goods manufacturer, said David Jacobs, interim director of the Rose Bowl.
World Cup venue director David Simmons is unabashed about selecting Los Angeles’ Exposition Park as the site of SoccerFest. The park was chosen in part out of a desire to include the city in the World Cup events, organizers said.
“I look at it as an opportunity for Pasadena to come up with their own event,” Simmons said. “Most people don’t know who throws the party. They just know that it’s a party.”
There has already been some concern--after a promised $1 million from this year’s Super Bowl never materialized--that the World Cup could be another losing proposition for Pasadena, with massive security expenses eating up leasing fees. According to Jacobs, the World Cup organization will pay for all of the game-day expenses, leaving the city’s $2-million fee as almost pure profit.
“Anything over and above what we normally provide, such as staff that’s on standby for any unseen issues, such as plumbing problems, will be picked up by the World Cup organization,” Jacobs said.
Simmons was noncommittal about the amount that the organizers of the games would pay. “The city will provide some services (on game days),” he said. “Clearly, some services we’ll have to pay additional money for.”
But there’s a deja vu to the biggest World Cup flap so far in Pasadena. What would a major Rose Bowl event be without a ticket controversy?
Last March, World Cup officials gave the city the opportunity to buy 9,000 tickets at face value, ranging from $25 to $475. The problem was that the city had two months to come up with half of the tickets’ aggregate value of $1,068,500, and the city itself couldn’t afford to put up the money.
This set off a mad scramble by city staff to come up with buyers. Sales to holders of Rose Bowl luxury suites, to others who had done business with the city and to city staff brought charges from City Council members that some of the buyers could be profiteers.
Some suite holders made down payments on blocks of tickets worth more than $20,000. “They’re using these tickets to pay for their suites,” charged Councilman Richard, who later retracted the charge.
Individual members of the city staff paid as much as $3,679 to buy tickets, and youth soccer leagues shelled out amounts of $64,380 and $30,794. In all cases, the buyers insisted, the tickets were not for resale.
On Dec. 14, after lawyers advised that withdrawing the offer to sell the tickets could expose the city to lawsuits, the City Council voted to let the sales stand. But the council also voted to set aside the 2,000 remaining tickets for use by the Chamber of Commerce to raise money for economic development.
