by Fred Seely
Editorial Director
The 11th floor of the 550 Building is quiet, but that’s just because it’s almost 900 days from the Super Bowl.
It is the home of the Super Bowl Host Committee and, despite the quietness in the 4,000 square feet of office space, there’s plenty of activity.
The computer screen saver sets the target: Feb. 6, 2005, the date of Super Bowl XXXIX, Jacksonville’s big moment on the national scene.
“It will be the biggest convention ever for Jacksonville,” said Michael Kelly, the committee’s president and chief operating officer. “Look at it as that: a huge week-long convention. But with an exclamation point at the end: a football game.”
Kelly and his staff are far ahead of any previous Super Bowl preparations in other cities.
For good reason.
“This is the smallest market ever to have a game, and it’s a market that’s never had a game,” said Kelly. “We have unique situations here, like the lack of hotel rooms, so we needed to get started early.”
Kelly is a professional sporting event organizer — he ran Tampa’s last Super Bowl — and he brings the needed experience to a staff that’s been cobbled together from the area.
He’ll oversee the effort from his corner office. It overlooks the river, which is somewhat blocked by the CSX building, and his staff’s offices string out to the west with views of the St. Johns River, downtown and the Southbank.
“We chose this location for several reasons,” said Kandi Begue, the director of administration. “The price was right compared with others. It has a good view of downtown, a view that we want our visitors to see. And, it’s downtown. We’re a downtown business.”
Begue’s office is next to Kelly’s. Then comes Patrick Duncan, who’ll handle sponsorships. A step away is Shelly Marino, the vice president who oversees marketing, and nearest the front door is Heather Surface, the communications director. All but Begue came from the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission staff; she was with the City, working out of the mayor’s office.
There are numerous vacant offices and workspaces.
“These will be the call banks when we near the game,” said Surface. “We can use the space if needed, but Mike wanted to make sure we had everything in place now. We’ll start staffing with volunteers in a year or so, and it really gets hectic as the game nears.”
The volunteers, other than the core of community leaders, won’t be pulled together until much later.
“We’ll have about 8,000 helping us but it’s not appropriate to get organized now,” said Kelly. “Many of them won’t have duties until the game nears. We’ll start the mass recruitment at, say, 364 days.”
The offices are rather sparse, other than the clutter in Surface’s area, and almost everything has been donated or loaned.
“I’m not sure we have anything that belongs to us,” said Marino. Furniture, artwork . . . all donated.”
The halls are lined with large paintings from the Cultural Council’s youth program; all show football players in some form of action pose. A Ford Riley nature print is in the 10-seat conference room. Other than that, it’s not much of a gallery.
“We’re really a satellite office for the National Football League,” said Kelly. “They have two Super Bowls before ours, so their Special Events office has plenty to do elsewhere. We coordinate with them; they occasionally visit.
“Remember, this is an NFL event. The NFL guides this ship.”
The talk on this morning was of tonight’s Host Committee meeting at the stadium, the first time the committee has been pulled together since they were introduced. There will be almost 100 community leaders present, and they’ll get an update on the progress and hear of future plans.
There will be eight major committees which will be phased in over the next year. There will be 57 subcommittees.
“Want to see a plan?” asks Marino. “It’s pretty complete. Believe me, Mike Kelly knows what he’s doing. It’s all spelled out.”