FIRST-CLASS DESTINATION
Clichés become clichés because they’re generally true. But anyone complaining about Houston being chosen for yet another Final Four, for the usual hackneyed reasons — traffic-choked streets, no fun to be had in the city center, etc. — hasn’t been here in a while or doesn’t understand what a diverse, cultured, dynamic city with something to enthrall pretty much everyone is supposed to look like.
My head blew up when I saw a tweet from somebody named Rob Dauster, who covers college hoops for NBC’s online sports website, reacting to HTown landing college basketball’s biggest weekend in 2023, which will be our third in a 13-year span. He called Houston “a terrible city to host big events ... traffic is terrible and there’s no downtown.”
What a knucklehead. Granted, the central business district was a nighttime wasteland as recently as 20 years ago when construction of Minute Maid Park began, and we have to concede his point on the traffic. But who cares about what we were when we are what we are now, and any living, breathing 21stcentury city is going to have too many cars. What you can’t have are too many envelope-pushing chefs working with cutting-edge sommeliers/ mixologists, or hyper-cool places to hang out. We have those aplenty.
It would take a doggedly resolute foodie at least a week to eat his or her way through only the high-end restos in the city’s center today. And, if ol’ Rob is a burgers-barbecue-beer guy, we also kick serious butt in the downscale-dining department. If he’s an operaballet-symphony-theater maven (granted, it’s unlikely), they’re all downtown options as well.
Room at the inns
Hotels? There are at least 20 in the central business district — with nearly 8,000 rooms — I’d have no qualms booking. And therel likely will be more than 8,000 residential units on line by the time the Final Four returns. Nearly 75,000 people live within a twomile radius of downtown today and another 5,000 minimum are expected to move deep into the city’s heart by 2023. These numbers guarantee a vibrant street scene will await our visitors.
The 2017World Series last provided critical mass in a different way. It brought waves of suburban Houstonians, many of them previously disinterested in the city’s heart or perhaps even flat-out afraid of the place, swarming in. And they haven’t stopped coming. Ask Bill Floyd, Astros owner Jim Crane’s managing partner in Potente and Osso & Kristalla restaurants across from Minute Maid Park.
“These are the dog days of summer, no conventions in town and the Astros not here this week, but we were completely full at Potente (Tuesday) night,” he said. “And we’re completely booked for Saturday night. I can’t ever remember that happening in the summertime. I’m running into so many people now who tell me, ‘Shoot, downtown is cool. I’m gonna sell my big house and move down here.’ And look what’s happening in EaDo (east of U.S. 59). It’s blowing up over there.”
Floyd has been uniquely well-positioned to witness this dramatic transformation up close. He was charged with opening the Hotel Icon’s original restaurant, concepted by celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongrichten around the time of Super Bowl XXXVIII, in early February 2004, which generally marks the beginning of the neighborhood becoming something resembling a neighborhood again. Sadly, though, it didn’t last the first time around, with things getting really bad when the financial crisis hit in late 2008. Floyd admits he would have been in Dauster’s dissing camp back then.
“I swore I’d never go downtown again,” he said, “never mind open another restaurant down here. But the change has been dramatic. It’s a different world today.”
Since planning for that Super Bowl began about two decades ago, more than $9 billion in public and private funds have been spent on making downtown the vibrant place it is today. The most recent Super Bowl (LI in 2017) and Final Four (2016) were widely acclaimed successes by out-of-towners and dramatic improvements, both of the aesthetic and infrastructure variety, have continued apace since, ensuring a more compelling backdrop for future mega-city-wide sporting festivals.
Record of success
When Duke athletic director KevinWhite, a member of the NCAA men’s basketball committee, was in town last month to tour NRG Stadium, he said: “You get a real sense of Houston that it has become a championship city. This is a city that knows how to put on, how to host major events. There’s a real track record of success.”
Apparently so. They keep returning. Between 2004 and 2017, Houston hosted seven of them: two Super Bowls, two Final Fours, two NBA All-Star Games and baseball’s All-Star Game. Only New Orleans and Phoenix, with five each, came close to matching that.
Rob, wake up. We must be doing something right.
I should note Dauster seriously dissed San Antonio as a Final Four site, too, but I’ll let the Alamo City fight its own battles.
This story first appeared on txsportsnation.com, the Chronicle’s premium sports website. Sign up for the Texas Sports Nation newsletter at chron.com/newsletter
Houston takes a back seat to no city when it welcomes fans, teams to a major sports event