Even if there weren’t Super Bowl banners hanging from lamp posts and signs plastered across recently erected security fences, it would still be obvious that New Orleans was gussying up for a reason.
The pair of bridges that span the Mississippi River — and that will almost certainly feature prominently in the atmospheric shots of New Orleans on television this weekend — have been draped in $21 million worth of decorative lights. Roads near the French Quarter, once pocked with crumbling pavement, are suddenly smooth. And around the city center, thousands of flowers have been planted.
“I almost didn’t recognize Canal Street,” said Ausettua AmorAmenkum, a native of the city. “I mean, the branding, the lights — it’s like Disneyland meets Vegas, you know?”
The Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles is projected to draw as many as 150,000 visitors and a television audience in excess of 100 million. City leaders are counting on the spectacle to serve as a giant ad for New Orleans as a destination.
Making sure the city was ready for the spotlight has required a swift and sprawling effort involving city and state officials, major businesses and local nonprofits. The work included installing new streetlights and sidewalks, stabilizing old buildings that leaned, cleaning up litter and painting murals.
“Giving the city a chance to shine,” as Michael Hecht, the chief executive of Greater New Orleans Inc., the region’s economic development organization, put it.
But residents have mixed feelings about the rush of improvements — surprise and satisfaction, sure, at seeing the heart of their notoriously gritty city now sparkling, but also a dash of umbrage. Some have long seen the city’s power structure as more inclined to invest in the people passing through New Orleans than the ones living there.
“I love the improvements — I honestly do,” said Reggie Ford, 45, a local artist and activist. “But I don’t like how they cherry pick when they want to improve and for who.”
The bright lights over the river have become the butt of a wry joke: When storm drains have become blocked or an offline pump has flooded a street, social media fills with messages like, “But aren’t the bridge lights pretty?”
The millions of visitors who pour in every year sustain local businesses, provide livelihoods to waiters and musicians and artists, and burnish a cultural cachet that gives New Orleans, with a population of about 364,000, a higher profile than other cities its size.
But tourism has been blamed with contributing to a shortage of affordable housing because of the proliferation of short-term rentals. Many of the jobs created by tourism are service oriented, with low pay and limited options for advancement. The financial precariousness that often comes with such work was felt acutely by workers on Bourbon Street after the deadly terrorist attack on New Year’s Day. They had to hurry back to work, setting aside their fear and grief; they needed a paycheck.
Civic leaders and tourism officials contend that devoting resources to attracting visitors ultimately pays dividends to New Orleans as a whole.
The Super Bowl is an opportunity unlike any other, they argue. The game itself will directly inject well over a half-billion dollars into the local economy, officials say. Then there are the ancillary events: the corporate gatherings, the parties, the filled bars and restaurants around the city.
The programming will also highlight aspects of the singular culture that has forever been part of the city’s allure, including the Black masking Indians, the African American groups wearing elaborate, colorful hand-beaded and feathered suits that are a fixture of neighborhood Mardi Gras celebrations.
Ms. AmorAmenkum, a leader known as the big queen for Washitaw Nation, one of those groups, or tribes, will be part of Sunday’s preshow at Caesars Superdome. Another big queen from a different tribe, Tahj Williams of the Golden Eagles, sewed a beaded version of this year’s Super Bowl logo shown on billboards and promotional displays around the city.
Flozell Daniels, 54, said that the weekend would likely be highly lucrative for waiters, bartenders, musicians and others in the service industry. He remembered his own experience waiting banquet tables at a hotel during Super Bowl XXIV in 1990. He had never seen that level of wealth before. “Every time I moved, they gave me a $20 bill,” he said. He made $900 by the end of the weekend — enough, back then, to cover a few months of rent.
Still, most of New Orleans will experience the Super Bowl outside the security perimeter. For many of them, the event will consist of detours, congested roads and closed buildings.
A particularly bumpy stretch of Downman Road connecting the city’s secondary Lakefront Airport to a nearby highway has been repaved, creating a smoother ride for those arriving in the more than 1,200 private planes expected to land. But none of the roads sprouting off Downman got new pavement.
“The Super Bowl comes and all of a sudden, we’ve got all this money to do these temporary fixes,” said Michael Giordano, 60, who lives in the Mid-City neighborhood. “Not even fixes — Band-Aids.”
Civic leaders involved in the preparations said the Super Bowl-related projects would have a broader and enduring usefulness. “You can use these sporting events as forcing functions to create change that transcends the event itself,” Mr. Hecht said.
Mr. Ford’s frustrations were balanced with the glee he felt seeing City Hall, just a few blocks from the Superdome. The red neon lights outside worked again. Years of grime had been pressure-washed away. Carl Joe Williams, an artist from the city, had painted a complex geometric mural on the building with images of New Orleans cultural figures. Mr. Ford approved.
“He pulled it off,” he said of the artist. “Now, City Hall looks dope as heck.”
Organizers also noted that the beautification projects were not limited to the city center or even New Orleans. Thousands of trees have been planted. Juvenile, a rapper from New Orleans, took part in a recent cleanup in the Lower Ninth Ward. The National Football League has pledged to donate equipment, supplies and surplus food to local food banks, art programs and coastal restoration groups.
Local business leaders and others involved in the effort said that they were inspired by what they have accomplished and feel like their work is not complete.
“We hope that by showing how much we can fix the city up in just a few months, we raise expectations” for improving infrastructure and public services, Mr. Hecht said. “When we work together, we can be world class.”
Some in the city want to hold them to that.
Ms. AmorAmenkum, like others, saw hosting the Super Bowl as no different than holding a party at home. It’s only natural to want to have the parts of the house the guests see to be as inviting and tidy as possible, she said.
But the party ends.
“When the people leave, your family still lives there with you,” she said. “So I want to see this continue when it’s over. Finish fixing the streets. Finish beautifying, finish putting flowers out. Keep the stuff well lit. Keep the police presence. We deserve all of that.”
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