by J. Brooks Terry
Staff Writer
Years of Super Bowl preparation are coming to a head this week as the City’s Special Events Office works to set the downtown stage for the thousands of visitors headed our way.
Taking refuge in a vacant suite of offices in the Coker law firm building on Bay Street, Special Events spokesperson Christina Langston said the City will use the space to monitor all activities in and around downtown.
“The Super Command Center is literally the hub for all of the activity happening in the SuperFest,” Langston said. “From getting supplies where they need to be to answering any questions anyone may have, this is it.”
Special Events director Teresa O’Donnell agreed: if you have any SuperFest-related concern, call the Command Center.
“We’ve made sure that everyone has our number from vendors to Bay Street business owners to water taxi services to the trams that will be running,” O’Donnell said. “It’s all right here.”
Wednesday afternoon, O’Donnell even took a call from a man who wanted to donate his Ponte Vedra home for Willie Nelson to use while in town so that the entertainer could be more comfortable.
“You never know who’s going to be at the other end of the line,” she said.
Easily fielding upwards of 100 phone calls a day earlier this week, Command Center mainstay Shari Gottlieb said the number and intensity of those calls increase by the hour.
“It goes from calm to crazy out of nowhere,” said Gottlieb. “We’ll be sitting here and it’s quiet and the next thing you know, you’ve got three people on hold and two more trying to radio you from another location in the SuperFest. It can be stressful but you have to get through it because we’re still in it for the long haul.”
Still able to enjoy brief periods of respite, O’Donnell said from tonight on, the Command Center will virtually never stop running.
“That sounds about right,” she said. “There may be a two hour window when the lights are off, but that’s about it.”
The rest of the time, O’Donnell said, the Special Events Office and the Police and Fire and Rescue Departments will be awake and ready to take action there.
“This is what we’ve been preparing for,” she said. “It’s a big job, but we’re ready for it.”