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The financial impact of the Superdome is felt far beyond its walls. The average Super Bowl patron will, by conservative estimate, spend $100 a day. The dome last year directly generated more than $2 million in tax revenues, plus an estimated $3 million from a 4% city hotel/motel tax that was levied to help pay for the behemoth. Thus while the building ran $5.5 million in the red. it brought in more than lagniappe to the local economy.
One indication of the Superdome's viability is that Abram Nicholas Pritzker agreed last July to take over management of the dome. A.N. Pritzker and his family are among the nation's biggest landowners. Their holdings in the Hyatt hotel chain (76 in the U.S., 24 abroad) are only part of their wealth. With an $80 million stake in the Hyatt across the street, the 82-year-old Pritzker created the Hyatt Management Corp. to run the building and installed as its president Denzil Skinner, 50, a crisp, urbane executive who had spent 19 years running public assembly areas from Virginia to Indiana. Skinner has virtually halved the staff, and replaced politically appointed executives and contractors with trained managers. "What can be done with this building," says Skinner, "is limited only by the imagination."
It is, of course, primarily a sports palace, and team owners love the place. Barry Mendelson, 34, New York-born executive vice president of the Jazz, points out that "there was no real longtime legacy of pro basketball in the South." Yet the club has broken N.B.A. attendance records five times. The football Saints, whose mundane performance on the field is partially offset by their spectacular half-time shows, are also incurable domophiles. and have a ten-year lease on the Poydras palazzo.
The dome's most important contribution to New Orleans is its location: smack in the middle of downtown.
Whereas some other cities, notably Detroit, have plunked sports stadiums in the suburbs, Louisiana decided early on that the dome's maximum economic benefit could be realized by placing it in a seedy, archaic industrial area (which is no more). Most of all, its accessibility benefits the cus tomer; indeed, it was designed as a "people place." As the plans evolved, it was agreed that it would not be just a foot ball palace, but a multipurpose sporting-business-conven tion-cultural center that could revitalize the sensual, sickly Blanche DuBois of cities.
New Orleans is one of the nation's poorest cities (21.6% of its citizens live below the poverty line). Yet Orleanians and visitors have always lavished money on sport, entertainment, betting and booze. To assure landing an N.F.L.
franchise, Louisiana voters in November 1966 amended the constitution and overwhelmingly approved a $35 million bond issue to finance the dome. The cost subsequently rose to $163 million.