Home > About BNE > Press Room > 2007 Archive > March > Fast-Breaking for economic slam-dunk

By Stephen T. Watson

E.B. Green's is ordering extra steak. Pearl Street Grill & Brewery is brewing more lagers and ales.

And the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority will be running additional trains, buses and trolleys.

It's all part of the extensive efforts to get the city ready for the thousands of college basketball fans coming here this week for the NCAA Tournament subregional.

"The whole city"s going to be a great place to be. It"s going to be crazy, but what a great opportunity to showcase Buffalo," said Michael Marsch, general manager of the Hyatt Regency Buffalo, which is fully booked for the weekend.

Buffalo again will host eight college basketball teams in first- and second-round games Thursday and Saturday in a sold-out HSBC Arena.

The region is grabbing a piece of the sports spotlight, while out-oftown guests are expected to spend millions of dollars at hotels, restaurants and bars.

"These are the kind of things we hang our hat on. We land them, we execute them, and then they become part of our sales resume," said David Hart, owner of Hart Hotels and chairman of the local organizing committee.

In 2004, organizers won praise for the smooth tournament operations inside the arena. However, downtown restaurants did struggle to serve 18,000 hungry and thirsty basketball fans between the afternoon and evening games Thursday.

Organizers say they have learned from the difficulties of three years ago and have a better plan to handle the between-games crowds.

"It's a matter of, let's see what we could have done better and let's do it," said Michael T. Schmand, executive director of Buffalo Place, the downtown advocacy group.

Buffalo is hosting top basketball schools Pittsburgh, Maryland and Duke and five other teams. There will be four games Thursday, and the winners will play in two games Saturday.

About 12,000 of the 18,000 or so people attending the games will be out-of-town visitors, said Edward J. Healy, director of communications for the Buffalo Niagara Convention & Visitors Bureau.

In addition, he said, there will be 1,950 team members, journalists and support staff traveling to Buffalo for the tournament.

Nearly all of the 1,200 hotel rooms in downtown Buffalo are expected to be filled for the tournament, which will have a $4.2 million economic impact on the region, the visitors bureau estimated.

That figure is based on each visitor spending $125 per day -considered the standard for tourists- over an average stay of three days for the fans and five days for the media and support staff, Healy said.

The visitors bureau has worked for months with restaurant and hotel representatives, the NFTA and Buffalo police on planning for everything from traffic control to food service.

An especially important focus is the period between games Thursday.

The NCAA has a policy that everyone must leave the arena during that period, so fans will be looking to get some food or drinks while they kill time.

However, the tournament's schedule allows for a break of only about 90 minutes, so fans don't have very long to eat and don't want to go too far.

This led to problems here in 2004, organizers acknowledge.

Many fans complained about long lines and said they ran out of time waiting to get a table.

This year, Robert Free, director of Pettibones Grille, is working to get the restaurant ready for the crowds Thursday. But three years ago, he attended the games as a fan and saw things from the other side.

He ended up taking a Metro train to West Chippewa Street, where he and a friend couldn't get a table but managed to scrounge up some happy-hour food from a bar.

"That experience was great training for what I'm doing now," Free said.

Local organizers say they have a better system in place to direct people away from the restaurants that are close to the arena.

The NFTA is scheduling extra Metro trains, as well as trolleys that will run along Washington Street and Delaware Avenue and special buses that will carry fans north to the restaurants on West Chippewa and Elmwood Avenue, said C. Douglas Hartmayer, NFTA director of public affairs.

Dunn Tire Park is opening up its ground-floor concourse to serve hot dogs and hamburgers and also will serve buffetstyle food in Pettibones.

Pearl Street Grill had its best sales week ever, up to that point, during the NCAA Tournament in 2004, said general manager William Casale. The pub served 3,500 meals on that Thursday alone.

"We were ready for what we had. It was awesome. The staff was pumped. The guests were pumped. Everybody was in great spirits," Casale said.

Pearl Street Grill has since undergone a $1 million expansion and has hired extra staff. Casale said the restaurant expects to serve about 5,000 meals and 12,000 pints of house-brewed beer Thursday by using every possible inch of its four floors.

In addition, other concession companies and restaurateurs plan to set up food tents at spots near the arena.

Friday is an off day, so the fans staying in town for Saturday's games will have time to sightsee and shop. "It's a good chance, basically, to show Buffalo off on that Friday," Healy said.

Buffalo Niagara Enterprise is taking advantage of the tournament to bring national media, corporate site selectors and business executives to town.

The business group is taking the editors of three life sciences trade publications to dinner at the Buffalo Chophouse and introducing them to local researchers and entrepreneurs who work in that field, said Therese Hickok, director of marketing and communications for the group.

"The goal is just to publicize our assets," Hickok said.

Everyone is hoping that the weather cooperates better than in 2004, when a storm dumped a record 14 inches of snow two days before the games started.

Despite the snow, "we never once had a question that didn't get answered," said Scott Reed, sports information director for DePaul. The team got police escorts to and from the arena, he said, and enjoyed chicken wings at the Anchor Bar.

swatson@buffnews.com