It’s been the calm before the big storm in downtown Phoenix this week.
Roads began closing. More signs went up in windows and on the sides of buildings. And an ice skating rink took shape in the middle of Central Avenue at CityScape.
It’s all in preparation for this weekend, when Super Bowl XLIX celebrations begin and will continue through game day on Feb. 1 at Glendale’s University of Phoenix Stadium.
And businesses within the downtown core are preparing to get slammed.
Marjerle’s Sports Grill, which is located in the heart of Super Bowl festivities at Washington and Second streets, expects to be packed all week.
Amy Weaver, the establishment’s event and marketing coordinator, said they’ve been working to triple their staff since the summer and plan to have all hands on deck with expanded hours next week. The sports bar has also spent the last several weeks stocking up not only on food and beverages, but also on things such as dishes, silverware and drinkware, she said.
“We want them to have that backup and not have to rush and wash it, they can just pull from our stock,” Weaver said. “Just anything like that we’ve had to take into account, little things like that just to make sure that everything runs smoothly.”
Marjele’s has seen big crowds before. Former Phoenix Suns player Dan Marjele opened the sports bar in the early 1990s, and for years it was one of the few places for visitors and sports fans to go downtown.
But next week could be unlike anything Marjele’s or other downtown businesses, have ever seen.
Almost all the big celebrations leading up to game day are taking place within 12 blocks that have been called the Verizon Super Bowl Central, where one million people are expected to roll through.
That’s much different from 2008, the last time the Valley hosted the big game, when festivities were spread out in multiple locations.
Downtown has also changed dramatically since then. CityScape opened and so did Valley Metro's light rail, and big developments like Arizona State University’s Phoenix campus are more robust.
Many locally owned restaurants, bars, coffee shops and art houses have also since opened in areas just outside the downtown core.
But with that location outside of the core and some inexperience with crowds of this magnitude, those local shops say they really don’t know what to expect next week.
“I’m completely naïve right now about this,” said Kelly Aubey, owner of FilmBar, a small bar and movie theater located on Second Street near McKinley Street, just a few blocks north of Super Bowl Central. “I’m just going to do business as usual, stock up like crazy. We’ve got staff on reserve in case we get creamed, I’ll be able to call in extra people, myself included.”
FilmBar and other nearby shops aren’t part of the official celebrations downtown. Therefore it's hard to gauge how many people will venture out, and they’re prepared for crowds as much as possible.
Along the Roosevelt Row Arts District, roughly two blocks north of FilmBar, many shops hope to draw traffic by hosting their own events throughout the week, such as farmers and flea markets, sidewalk fairs and live mural painting by local artists.
GreenHaus Gallery + Boutique is hosting one of those flea markets, but owners Dayna and Cole Reed, a same-sex couple who married three years ago, are getting involved for more personal reasons.
“We’re in kind of a funky situation, because this is also our last week open before we move and leave the state due to the same-sex adoption laws here in Arizona,” said Dayna Reed, who is pregnant with a March due date. “So we’re using the Super Bowl as kind of our grand goodbye, if you will.”
While the Super Bowl marks a bittersweet goodbye for the Reeds — GreenHaus’s will close the week after the big game, almost three years to the date it opened — it’s the ultimate beginning for Michael Reyes, just a few stores down.
Reyes opened a taco restaurant called Paz only two months ago at Roosevelt and Third streets.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime year,” he said. “To launch a little brand in downtown Phoenix and to be as well as [my] team has done this, we have a huge opportunity to get visibility.”
Between millions of dollars in reimbursements to the National Football League and the huge costs that local governments take on to host the game and events, the Super Bowl’s true economic benefit has been up for debate.
But for this growing community of local entrepreneurs, it’s more than just about dollars. It’s a chance to show off downtown’s evolving local culture and prove that Phoenix is more than sprawling tract homes and endless strip malls.
