Milwaukee a final four host?

[spiral97]

The mayor wants it.. this article has the mayor going into the details of what they're looking to do to make milwaukee logistically able to bid for the games.

During Mayor Tom Barrett's State of the City address, the Mayor suggested the possibility of having the four NCAA Division 1 Men's basketball teams play in a tournament at Miller Park...and he added a lofty goal behind it.

"It would allow us to showcase Miller Park for a future NCAA Final Four tournament," said Barrett.

The Final Four. The biggest of big dances.

Wisconsin teams have stepped onto its dance floor twice in the last seven years.

Now Mayor Barrett wants to lay down the dance floor in the Brew City and bring the four best teams in college hoops to town and give Milwaukee, in the words of that famous NCAA Final Four theme, "One Shining Moment."

But how realistic is Barrett's vision for a Final Four in Milwaukee?

To say the least, it would be a challenge.

To find out how challenging, Newsradio 620 WTMJ talked with Jeanne Boyd, the Managing Director of the NCAA Division 1 Men's Basketball Championship. She said Milwaukee can't just say they want the Final Four, and then get it.

"It's a pretty complicated, kind of a drawn out process," said Boyd.

The start of the process involves making sure Milwaukee has the three elements the NCAA looks at in a city that they'd consider a possible Final Four site.

Part one: having enough planes going in and out of Mitchell to accommodate at least 35,000 basketball fans.

"We need to make sure there's a lot of flights that fly in back and forth," said Boyd.

"We would ask, as part of the bid specification, a list of all the flights."

The NCAA didn't give us definite numbers on what they require, but right now, Mitchell International has 235 flights going out on an average day.

Indianapolis is about the size of MIlwaukee, and they're a regular Final Four host. Their latest fact book says 280 flights go out of Indianapolis International Airport each day.

That's about a 15% disparity between the cities' airports, but it might not be impossible to overcome that.

So say the fans have enough ways to come in town to watch the games at Miller Park. Is the stadium big enough for the NCAA?

"We need a facility that can house a minimum of 40,000 seats," said Boyd.

"Not a problem," says Rick Schlesinger, the Milwaukee Brewers Executive Vice President of Business Operations.

"We could certainly accommodate 40,000 or more for a basketball tournament."

How the Brewers and Miller Park would accomplish that is by placing the basketball floor in between first and third base, and putting temporary seats along the baseline that stands in the outfield. That would make sure all four decks that run along the first and third base lines could have proper sight lines to watch the games.

But say it's a cold night in April...with the way the stadium is heated now, it might not be warm enough for fans who come from warmer climates.

"Right now we have the capacity to heat the interior of the stadium 30 degrees above the ambient temperature," said Schlesinger.

"If it's 30 degrees outside, we can heat this place to about 60 degrees. If you have 40,000-plus fans in here, the body temperature of all those fans will elevate the temperature inside the bowl."

But what if the championship game happens on a night in April that drops to 20 degrees, like all of us know that it can around that time of year? Do you want fans from California and Florida in the upper deck wearing parks while they watch their favorite team?

"What I would look to do is talk to engineers at Johnson Controls who help operate the facility here in terms of what other measures we could take to deal with the potential for, even if it's in early April, a very cold night." said Schlesinger.

"We could look at some temporary operational things to ensure that the heating would be sufficient."

So there are enough seats for every fan that can go, and they can stay warm. But Boyd says there's more the NCAA has to have before they give Miller Park the go-ahead.

"We need four dressing rooms with each of their own little shower areas and toilet facilities," said Boyd.

"We need two dressing rooms for the officials. We need an athletic training room that's capable to provide any athletic training services the teams would need, including x-ray facilities. We need a separate area for drug testing. We need NCAA office space, CBS truck parking space. We also need an upper media seating area for a minimum of 120 media personnel."

For all those things, Schlesinger says the Brewers have enough in place to handle those things. But the Brewers say they'll have to get creative for other NCAA needs.

"We also need upper photo areas, a working media room that has a minimum of 300 seats. In addition to the work room, we need another media area that is capable that is capable of housing 300 individuals in theater style seating," said Boyd.

"The good news is that we've got a large media working room. It probably would not be able to handle 300, but I will tell you that we can reconfigure," said Schlesinger.

"We have tons of meeting rooms and areas that can accommodate all the media, writing and support staff they would need. With us hosting the All-Star game, and with us certainly configured to host - knock on wood - World Series games here, we can accommodate all the NCAA needs for a tournament here."

What will it cost to make those changes?

"The issues with the NCAA and their needs would not in my mind be very expensive. It would be a lot of things that we would have to retrofit - existing structures, existing rooms. The only challenge as I see it that operationally that we have the temperature here that we need it to be."

In other words, the Brewers and the powers-that-be don't have to do a lot ot Miller Park to make it Final Four-ready.

So we now know the fans can get to Milwaukee, and they can watch the game in reasonable warmth.

But where will they stay while they're here?

Boyd says that just by itself, the NCAA needs a lot of hotel space.

"About 10,000 hotel rooms to be able to house us, our broadcast partners, our 'Corporate Champions' and partners and the NABC," said Boyd.

The NABC is the National Association of Basketball Coaches, and they hold their convention at the same time, in the same city as the Final Four.

Still, the fans have to have someplace to stay.

"We will put the convention and visitors bureau in commission to go ahead and create another block for the fans," said Boyd.

We asked Visit Milwaukee President and CEO Doug Neilson how many hotel rooms the Milwaukee area has.

"We have 13,000 rooms within the four county Greater Milwaukee area," said Neilson.

Doing the math, that leaves 3,000 hotel rooms for 35,000-plus fans.

Because the NCAA would probably take the 10,000 closest rooms, that means about 12 fans would have to sleep in every remaining hotel room, and they'll have to commute from Delafield or Port Washington to go to the games.

That's not going to work.

We mentioned that Indianapolis is about Milwaukee's size, and they've hosted four Final Fours in the last 16 years. How can they take all those basketball fans in?

"Indianapolis has got close to 25,000, even 30,000 rooms," said Neilson.

That is plenty for what the Final Four fans need.

So how does Milwaukee suddenly get 12,000 more hotel rooms, most of which would probably need to be close to Miller Park or downtown?

Travelers will need to have more reasons than just a Final Four to come to Milwaukee, enabling hotel companies to come to the Brew City and build more hotels.

"This is only one event," said Neilson.

"You don't build a new hotel, large hotels to host one event. If we can expand the (Midwest Airlines) Center and if we find out there is a demand there for additional convention center space, then you're going to bring larger groups on a regular basis here. That's going to create a demand for more hotel rooms."

The basic answers to the question of what Milwaukee has to do to get the Final Four?

1) Expand Mitchell's service by about 15 to 20 percent.

2) Do a little, but not a lot of work to Miller Park to make it ready for the Final Four.

3) Expand the reasons for travelers to come to MIlwaukee to such an extent that enough hotels would come in and double the total count of hotel rooms in the area.

It's a lofty goal, but one Neilson and Schlesinger say Milwaukee can shoot for.

"It's certainly would be a nice dream and something that, you know, that we can hope to aspire to," said Neilson.

"Let's talk about 'why not?' as opposed to 'we can't do it,' " said Schlesinger.

"Miller Park and Milwaukee can be the home to the greatest experience in college basketball."

But Schlesinger has one demand for the NCAA in this whole Final Four plan.

"The (Klement's Racing) Sausages would have to be part of it. Otherwise, it's a deal breaker."

The NCAA says there can be no sausage races during half-time, but the Brat, Polish, Italian, Hot Dog and Chorizo can enjoy the party.

"We'll arrange for them to have some exposure at a lot of different events surrounding the Final Four," said Boyd.

And if all this gets worked out, just think of 40,000 people at Miller Park, and millions more around the world watching the Sausages, and more importantly, the best basketball teams in college hoops, playing for the biggest prize in their sport...

...in the Brew City.

As basketball broadcaster and devotee Dick Vitale might say,  "Hellooooooooo Milwaukeeeeeeee

[Big Papi]

I dont see the number of flights into milwaukee as an issue.  O'Hare is close enough to Milwaukee to be able to subsidize the number of flights Mitchell receives.  It is only an hour and a half away and that should be a very easy sell.

[WashDCWarrior]

Could you get a cruise ship to dock on Lake Michigan serving as hotel rooms.

Also, when did the sausage races add chorizo?

[Mayor McCheese]

Could you get a cruise ship to dock on Lake Michigan serving as hotel rooms.

Also, when did the sausage races add chorizo?

Last year for a weekend, then it got suspended for a year (mascots have to wait a year before being introduced, they just let it run for that weekend(some Hispanic weekend in Milwaukee))  I was it for Halloween, it rocked

[IAmMarquette]

Could you get a cruise ship to dock on Lake Michigan serving as hotel rooms.

Also, when did the sausage races add chorizo?

Chorizo was added last season on Cerveceros day. He only made 1 appearance last year before being "sent to the minors."

http://milwaukee.brewers.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20060727&content_id=1578614&vkey=news_mil&fext=.jsp&c_id=mil

[Sir Lawrence]

Could you get a cruise ship to dock on Lake Michigan serving as hotel rooms.

Depends on global warming.  Pretty icey on the Lake today.