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Texas

Houston looks to shine in Super Bowl spotlight
MICHAEL GRACZYK
Jan. 24, 2004
Associated Press

HOUSTON - With the nation's largest concentration of chemical plants and refineries and a mystique framed by movies such as "Urban Cowboy," the push is on to create a new image for Houston as the Super Bowl puts the city in the spotlight.

Chuck Watson, chairman of the Super Bowl host committee, uses a cattle term - branding - to describe what the Feb. 1 game and its related week-long events should accomplish.

"We've taken a few hits the last few years," he said. "Think about on Monday morning (after the game). You're on the front page of every newspaper in the world. It's about putting Houston in a positive light."

This Super Bowl is seen as a chance to shed old images and dazzle outsiders by showing off new sports arenas, a huge new downtown hotel and the first working leg of a new light rail mass transit system that, not coincidentally, links a reborn downtown entertainment district with the new football stadium seven miles away.

"It's going to be a large party at the front door," said Bob Eury, who heads Central Houston, a city business-civic booster group. "When you get down to it, some of this happening now is the result of major projects a long time coming."

While Houston and Texas are spending millions to help make the city shine, Houston must contend with a history filled with grit and sometimes scandal.

Tropical Storm Allison in June 2001 left the city under water. The last presidential campaign portrayed it as America's most air polluted city. An embarrassing financial scandal toppled Enron Corp., which at No. 7 used to be Houston's highest-ranked company on the Fortune 500 list.

If that wasn't enough, mention of Houston resurrects recollections of some spectacular recent crimes - like the mom who drowned her five kids, and a woman who used her car to run over and kill her cheating husband. Then there was the tawdry legal battle of a former Houston stripper, Anna Nicole Smith, trying to claim the millions of her elderly dead oilman husband.

The last big media event here was the Republican National Convention in 1992, where native son George Bush was nominated for a second term in the White House.

He lost.

"My sense is Houston has struggled with one image or another over the years," Eury said. "It's kind of like the little kid growing up, sprawling, not so neat and pretty, and frankly not very urban."

It also doesn't have a French Quarter like New Orleans, South Beach of Miami and the gorgeous scenery of California, all past Super Bowl hosts.

What some of the 72,000 football fans climbing into the upper levels of the palatial $449 million Reliant Stadium next Sunday can see is a glimpse of the Erector-set-like collection of chemical plants and refineries that dot the otherwise flat horizon and helped make Houston the energy capital of the world.

Houston's port, its location as a transportation hub and its good luck of sitting atop oil and gas reserves discovered a century ago helped fuel the energy boom and a Sunbelt migration in 1970s that pushed Houston to No. 4 among the nation's largest cities. The popular 1980 movie "Urban Cowboy," filmed in Houston and adjacent Pasadena, played on the city's cliche as a haven for honky-tonks, mechanical bulls, 10-gallon hats and refinery worker rowdiness.

It was in that era that the NFL brought its big show to town for the first time, holding the 1974 Super Bowl at Rice Stadium - a 1950s-generation bowl where 71,882 sat in the open air on wooden bleachers. It's only a couple miles from new Reliant Stadium, financed by some of the country's highest hotel and car rental taxes, but artistically and luxuriously is like comparing a horse-pulled covered wagon to a loaded Hummer.

This time around, visitors will find a cleaner, friendlier Houston. Besides all the new construction, work crews and volunteers for weeks have painted, cleaned and mowed. More than 20,000 trees were planted along highway routes leading into the center of town. Since October, more than 20 tons of trash and debris and 1,300 illegally dumped tires have been removed in Super Bowl-inspired neighborhood cleanups. Even mold thriving in the humid climate and atop the new baseball stadium's roof was cleared.

The city put out the call for 10,000 smiling volunteers to do things like greet visitors at the airports and staff information booths at hotels. And just last week, Mayor Bill White began an advertising campaign - "Put your smile on. Company's coming!" - to urge the city's 2 million residents to welcome the estimated 120,000 Super Bowl visitors.

"I am kind of nervous," said Frisby, who goes by the single name and runs a shoeshine bench at the hotel where the Carolina Panthers will be housed all week. "If we don't do good, we're going to be overlooked when another one of these events comes along. Seeing this is a world-class city, we should have an opportunity to contend.

"... I just hope their stay here goes off without a hitch."