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The Tampa Tribune
Published: December 26, 2011
Updated: December 26, 2011 - 5:00 AM
Millions of dollars and months of preparation focus on four days in August when tens of thousands of delegates, media, protesters and hangers-on will join Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and friends at the 2012 Republican National Convention.
But the greater payback for host city Tampa could take place in the years after presidential and vice presidential candidates are selected.
Sustainable improvements in transportation, economic development, security and high-tech communications are the Tampa Bay Host Committee's key goals beyond a short-term outlook to fill hotel beds and project a favorable regional image to a worldwide audience.
"For the long term ? we aim to provide a sustained economic boost for the entire Tampa Bay area not only from a tourism industry standpoint but also from a business development and relocation standpoint," Tampa Bay and Company spokesman Travis Claytor said.
Officials in Tampa and beyond say the prospective benefits of hosting a national political convention fall somewhere between landing the Olympics and the Super Bowl.
"Atlanta has never stopped leveraging our Olympic opportunity to revitalize downtown Atlanta, recruit companies from all over the world and host the biggest and best sporting events in the nation," then-Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce president Sam Williams said in 2006, a decade after the 1996 Summer Olympics.
Similar appraisals followed the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis and the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver.
The 2008 Republican National Convention Impact Report, which the party released a year after the event, contained a study by a University of St. Thomas professor that cited more than $153 million in direct economic impact for the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. More importantly, the economic benefits were expected to ripple for years to come.
"In addition to the tangible results ? there are also many intangibles that will continue to benefit us like the thousands of stories that are circulating about the amazing attributes of our cities," Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak said.
A review by the Denver 2008 host committee a year after the Democratic National Convention reported $133.5 million in direct economic impact. As in Minneapolis, organizers and city officials said the dollars flowing into the city during the convention were just the beginning.
"Those economic benefits will continue to grow thanks to the positive impression that Denver made on visitors," the impact report concluded. "As a result, visitors may return for family vacations, decide to host their organization's conference here or consider expanding their business here."
The first priority for Republican Party officials in Tampa is to nominate the person who can become the next president of the United States, said James Davis, the Tampa-based spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Republican Party Committee on Arrangements.
"We want to be good guests and there will be definite 'leave-behinds' from us being here, some structural, some in lessons learned, some in infrastructure we can't get into yet," Davis said.
Tampa Bay and Company, Hillsborough County's visitors bureau, in January 2010 submitted the bid document to compete with Phoenix and Salt Lake City to host the 2012 convention.
Transportation was a key element, with the need for new concepts and strategies to accommodate four days of convention visitors and travel converging on downtown. That will differs from football games that take place in a few hours with most fans traveling in their own cars.
Some challenges are obvious from information in Tampa's inch-thick bid document.
It shows that approximately 16,000 hotel rooms the visitors bureau originally committed to the convention are spread in a wide swath: about 2,450 rooms and suites in downtown Tampa; 5,100 in West Tampa; 1,460 in East Tampa; 2,590 in North Tampa; and 4,500 in Pinellas.
The Orlando-based transportation company SP Plus Gameday is creating a plan to manage 300 luxury buses it will lease throughout the country to carry 5,000 of the visiting delegates between some 95 official convention hotels and the convention site.
Ronnie Duncan, who chairs the Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority, said TBARTA, the Florida Department of Transportation and a consultant are devising convention transportation proposals that could serve as tests for continued public acceptance.
Those include dedicating a freeway lane during certain periods of the day for buses or managed lanes for other vehicles to move them past normal congestion; research to create car pools, van pools and park-and-ride lot areas for local employees; greater use of transit including Bus Rapid Transit for residents seeking to avoid driving; and direct links from the airport during the convention to the Pinellas beaches, downtown and elsewhere with service that could be sustained.
"People want to test things," said Duncan, whose commercial real estate business has offices in Tampa and Atlanta. "Maybe they will work and maybe they will not. But they will help us at the least create a plan and try it out."
Duncan said Atlanta had issues convincing new business to relocate there until it learned that economic development recruiters, while impressed with post-Olympics infrastructure improvements, were more interested in transportation plans for 10 years and beyond.
"Tampa inevitably will be compared with Charlotte, which is hosting the 2012 Democratic Convention, and has a light rail system that has helped shape development there, which we don't have," he said. "But that's OK for now, as long as Brian Williams isn't reporting on TV that people cannot get around here. What we need to be able to say is we have plans for transportation solutions for the future."
Source: http://www2.tbo.com/news/breaking-news/2011/dec/26/gop-conventions-afterglow-may-linger-ar-340488/
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