LR, NLR pull out stops for NCAA
Posted on Sunday, March 16, 2008
Before there can be March Madness, there must be Selection Sunday.
By 6: 01 tonight, 65 college basketball teams will know where they’re playing in next weekend’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Championships, and thousands of fans will rush to snag reservations at area hotels.
Central Arkansas hotel operators won’t have to do much to attract fans. The eight teams headed to North Little Rock for first- and second-round games will bunk up, two per host hotel, and their followers naturally want to stay nearby.
“The nature of the beast is when the NCAA picks end, the phones start ringing. So there’s not a lot you can do to specifically market,” said Gretchen Hall, director of merchandising and communication for the Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau.
“I feel like, for something where we don’t even know who is coming yet, we’re about as prepared as we can be,” said Kelly Gee, Doubletree Hotel’s director of convention services. The downtown Little Rock hotel is one of four where teams will stay.
While host hotels can’t decorate with school colors because of National Collegiate Athletic Association rules, other establishments are suiting up for a basketball-themed weekend.
Employees at the Comfort Inn & Suites Downtown Little Rock off Interstate 30, will be decked out in referee uniforms to serve game food and drinks and to help people to their rooms, general manager Joel Smith said.
Even though it’s not a host hotel, most of the 150 rooms are already reserved.
Forty rooms are left for March Madness weekend Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and Smith expects more calls to come in after the team announcements.
“My prediction is that by Monday afternoon, I will probably be full,” he said.
The hotel is adding extra staff members to take reservations after tonight’s announcement. It also will be opening a meeting room for extra seating and hiring additional security in anticipation of the games.
Several schools, including the University of Memphis, have scouted sites for pep rallies and hotel rooms in the event they play at Alltel Arena.
Tickets went on sale last year for $ 167 each plus service charges, but a week out, ticket holders are reselling them on eBay for hundreds of dollars.
For each session, there are 16, 008 tickets. The NCAA took about 5, 700 tickets for corporate sponsors and networks; of those, each of the eight participating schools was allotted 550.
The Trojan Athletic Foundation and Alltel Arena Save Your Seat license holders bought 3, 500 tickets, leaving 6, 800 available for the public.
Tourism officials estimate tournament-goers will shell out $ 2. 5 million to $ 4 million on hotel rooms, food, souvenirs and other weekend purchases. The tournament will shine a spotlight on central Arkansas, which could trigger other conventions and tournaments to try the area.
When Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky., hosted first- and second-round games last year, it sold out.
“Basketball in March here means big business for hotels and restaurants. Any time you have an event associated with the NCAA first or second round, you can probably look at an economic impact of $ 5. 5 million,” said Rick Hatcher, president of the Lexington Area Sports Authority.
“March Madness in all sense of the word. That is what it is for all the hotels around here. It’s like herding a bunch of cats,” Hatcher said.
Officials in Oklahoma City said the city drew in $ 7 million to $ 11 million when it hosted the first round of the men’s tournament in 2005. Oklahoma City has hosted NCAA basketball tournaments since 1977.
“I think the first round is always good because you have more teams,” said Sandy Price, director of tourism and sales for Oklahoma City’s Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Early on in preparing for the 2008 tournament, Little Rock and North Little Rock officials turned to Oklahoma City for guidance.
Hosting NCAA tournaments has helped land others, such as the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Wrestling National Championships next year.
“The best advice they gave us is the NCAA provides you with a template for the tournament, and you follow it letter by letter. There are literally instructions down to the littlest detail,” said David Russell, the Arkansas River Cities Sports Commission’s director of sales.
One of those little details: what color to make banners flying above city streets.
“We went through quite a situation there with deciding the exact colors you can use, because you don’t want it to look like you’re using one particular team,” Russell said.
They ended up going with the safe standby, “NCAA blue.”
The sports commission, which includes tourism officials from both sides of the river, formed in January partly because of the tournament. The two cities are working together on the tournament because while the arena is in North Little Rock, most of the area’s 7, 200 hotel rooms are in Little Rock.
In anticipation of anywhere from 14, 000 to 30, 000 visitors, both cities have declared this week “NCAA Tournament Week” and Little Rock launched www. rockintherivermarket. com to showcase tournament events.
The two cities also urged area restaurants to open on Sunday and apply for special alcohol permits. NCAA rules prohibits Alltel Arena from selling alcohol during the Easter weekend tournament.
An establishment must have a private-club permit or a Sunday permit to serve alcohol on a Sunday. The state Alcoholic Beverage Control board will grant eligible restaurants and bars a conditional permit to sell alcohol on Sundays for establishments that didn’t apply the usual 30 days in advance.
“We’ve gotten some more Sunday permit applications, but they didn’t come in as a result of the tournament,” said Michael Langley, administration director of the alcohol division.
By Friday morning, four establishments had applied with the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Division for a Sunday alcohol permit, including the Comfort Inn & Suites Downtown.
Two downtown Little Rock bars — The Flying Saucer and Underground Pub — have applied, as well as Mac Daddy’s Bar & Grill in North Little Rock.
To attract visitors, Mac Daddy’s Bar & Grill plans to give away prizes such as T-shirts and ball caps “to people who come through the doors from out of town,” said Danny McDaniel, who owns the bar with his wife, Debbie.
The bar plans to have a disc jockey and doesn’t plan to charge a cover for most of the weekend. But that won’t become a regular Sunday thing — McDaniel said he planned to use his Sunday permit in the future only for special occasions. The Flying Saucer will be open Easter Sunday under its conditional permit, manager Corby Billingsley said. The bar doesn’t usually have security but will have additional doormen on hand to accommodate the expected influx.
For the Underground Pub, the weekend will simply be “normal business for us,” manager Sara Dykes said.
The bar didn’t see many extra guests when Little Rock hosted a national meeting for the Omega Psi Phi fraternity in July 2006, she said. The city had anticipated 10, 000 visitors, but only 1, 288 people registered.
“They told us we were going to be slammed day and night, and we had maybe two tables come in from [the fraternity ],” she said. “So you never know.”
With thousands of visitors expected in both cities, downtown parking could become hard to find starting Thursday.
On the Little Rock side, parking enforcers will be working as usual. Time requirements and meters will be enforced on weekdays, with free parking as usual on the weekend.
City officials expect many fans to park in parking garages and take a shuttle to Alltel Arena from the corner of Markham and Scott.
In North Little Rock, a shuttle will pick up fans from a parking lot at Main and 24 th, and police officers will direct traffic as they do for concerts.
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