With a targeted opening date of January 2016, Morgan Hill’s newest hotel, La Quinta Inn & Suites, hopes to kick off its operations a couple weeks before Super Bowl 50 and thousands of ravenous football fans touch down in the Bay Area.
“We are hoping, in a perfect world, that we are done, complete and ready to go right around the last week of January,” said an “optimistic but realistic” Andrew Firestone, principal for StonePark Capital that is developing the 104-room hotel on Condit Road. “We’re going to do everything in our power to make sure that happens, but we’re not going to overstep and make promises we can’t keep.”
That’s because the National Football League’s championship game, scheduled for Feb. 7, 2016 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, is a financial turbine expected to generate millions of dollars across the Bay Area. That includes Morgan Hill, which is less than 30 miles from the home of the San Francisco 49ers.
“The main thing we’re focused on right now as a chamber is when people come to town for the Super Bowl, how do we make them aware of other fun things to do (such as) the wineries, the restaurants, the shopping,” said Morgan Hill Chamber of Commerce Executive Director John Horner, who used the term “cross promotion.”
More than 150,000 visitors and 1 million people altogether will participate in some form of Super Bowl-related activities the week leading up to the NFL’s biggest stage, according to research from the Morgan Hill Downtown Association.
“It’s a great opportunity for the Morgan Hill business community to work together, and I think it can lead to other amazing things,” said David Dworkin, general manager at the Holiday Inn Express & Suites on Condit Road. “Will it be big for hotels? Absolutely. Will it be big for Morgan Hill? Absolutely.”
Morgan Hill Economic Development Manager Edith Ramirez is the local delegate to the Super Bowl 50 Host Committee—a 501(c) (6) nonprofit corporation that acts as the liaison between the NFL and the local community. The committee already encompasses economic development professionals, such as Ramirez, from more than 22 cities spanning four counties.
“The Super Bowl Host Committee, they are reaching out to all of the cities in the various counties and they really want to engage everybody and have everybody get excited and find ways to celebrate (during Super Bowl week),” Ramirez said.
It is up to each city to determine at what capacity and in what form they want to participate in Super Bowl-related activities, Ramirez continued.
“The Host Committee is responsible for the planning and production of Super Bowl 50 and its celebration elements,” according to the group’s website, sfbaysuperbowl.com. “As a team, we are committed to creating a Super Bowl experience that is uniquely Bay Area, and celebrates our communities and people like no other event has done before.”
Morgan Hill took the first big step forward in the process Sept. 3 when the City Council approved a contract to be part of the Super Bowl 50 Communities Program. That agreement allows the city access to a number of Super Bowl 50 logos they can choose from to represent Morgan Hill as well as establish a web page to promote the city’s Super Bowl-related activities.
“We can now engage and promote events without violating any (NFL) trademarks,” Ramirez said. “Our plan is very simple right now. We are going to find ways to showcase our community to the rest of the Bay Area and visitors coming to the Super Bowl by showing them the assets and wonderful recreation activities we have in our backyard.”
While the city’s focus, according to Ramirez, is to highlight what Morgan Hill has to offer, the Morgan Hill Tourism Alliance, which includes representatives from the city, chamber, downtown association, local wineries, hotels, farm bureau and other interested parties, has started brainstorming ideas as well. Ramirez said participants have discussed Super Bowl related activities at the last three MHTA meetings, but that is still in its infancy with nothing set in stone as of yet.
“Various community leaders are thinking through that. From a city perspective, we want to use the event to raise awareness,” Ramirez said. “But we don’t want to stand in the way of creative minds planning parties and other promotional aspects. We want everyone to dial in to the excitement.”
The city has created a new recreational map with nearly 80 individual attractions for the southern Silicon Valley region, according to Ramirez.
“It’s a very healthy, robust number of attractions (in our area),” she said.
It is expected that all hotel rooms as far south as Monterey will be filled with Super Bowl guests, according to the Morgan Hill Downtown Association, which has engaged local organizations and businesses to start thinking about what they might want to do as far as promotional events during Super Bowl week.
“We’re not going to try to get people to come to Morgan Hill (during Super Bowl week),” Horner said. “We’re trying to figure out how do we make sure that those who are staying in Morgan Hill know all the other things to do while they are here.”
