Stadium in the Sky

If you build it, the Super Bowl will come -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
Word has it now that the Super Bowl 45 (in year 2011) will be at the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington. My first instinct is a twinge of irritation that the City of Dallas let that slip through our fingers. That new state-of-the-art stadium could have and should have been in Fair Park but some people in city/county offices did not fight for it as mightily as they could have. Instead, the Stadium is going to Arlington near the Rangers Ballpark. Arlington is developing into a super-sports venue and certainly stands to gain from this latest announcement. Right off the bat, Arlington will be getting some highway improvements that will accommodate the Super Bowl traffic.

Now here is why we should toss out the sour grapes -- why it's good news for all of North Texas. A Super Bowl, much like the Olympics, brings tourism and camera crews to your town. For an entire month prior to the actual game, Sports Illustrated, ESPN and even NBC Evening News will be putting a focus on our metro area. According to the Houston Chamber of Commerce, patronage of Houston's hotels and meeting facilities skyrocketed after they hosted a Super Bowl at Minute Maid Stadium. Hosting of the game served as a continuous one-month commercial for the Houston area.

The press will be scouring the whole area to let visitors know what there is to see. We have (among many other things) the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth and the recently opened Red Courthouse Museum in Dallas. We have Love Field with a recently relaxed Wright Amendment. By 2011, we should have a new George Bush Presidential Library and a dramatically expanded DART Rail. There are actually compounded benefits, because people who enjoy these new attractions will remember what they saw when it's decision time for the next Olympics location.

The Dallas/Fort Worth metro area has a responsibility to make a good impression. I visited Sydney, Australia in 1999 -- one year prior to their hosting the 2000 Olympics. Not only were they building an Olympic Park, but they were fastidiously cleaning up the entire city. Medians were landscaped, old buildings were painted; the entire city was shined and polished. We should do no less here, at least in highly visible tourist areas. I don't know if fiercely capitalistic North Texas is up to such a collective goal as city beautification, but maybe we need to try some collective goal-setting here. The football goal posts will have a lot of camera time at Jerry Jones' Stadium in the Sky. If the DFW area manages its resources right, it will score some points more vital than those of any football play in the new stadium.

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