Superdome Named Desire

Just as New Orleans hit upon jazz, the only unique American contribution to art, and hit upon it almost by accident and despite itself, it could also hit upon the way out of the hell which has overtaken the American city.

--Novelist Walker Percy, in Harper's, 1968

New Orleans may just be doing that today. Its hopes of a renaissance-on-the-Mississippi rest heavily on a single building. That is, the Louisiana Superdome, the arena for the Super Bowl clash between Dallas and Denver. It has been called, variously and hyperbolically, the eighth wonder of the world, the most usable public facility ever designed, the structure that will make all other existing stadiums as obsolete as Rome's Colosseum. It is, claim Orleanians, "the domedest thing you ever saw," "the classiest sportin' house in the world" and "the Miracle on Poydras Street."

Mushrooming 273 ft. into the skyline, sited in 52 acres of the central business district, the copper-toned Superdome looks like a happily defected UFO, or--more to Orleanians' tastes--a gargantuan cheese souffle. Inside, despite a decidedly sublunary decor, the building is a mechanical marvel, capable of seating in air-conditioned comfort the entire populations of Andorra, Liechtenstein and Monaco, with room left over for a couple of football teams, four trade exhibitions, a dog show and a few hundred ushers, guards and food vendors. Or, as Orleanians never fail to point out, it could swallow Houston's Astrodome with hardly a burp.

The building could fill a page in The Guinness Book of World Records. The largest enclosed stadium in the world, it boasts a 9.7-acre roof, 9,000 tons of air conditioning, 32 escalators, ten elevators and 88 rest rooms. It has served more sit-down dinners in one place than any other caravansary in history: 65,000 meals in three days (Creole chicken, stuffed flounder and meat loaf) to the Lutheran Youth Gathering in August 1976. It has the world's largest roll-up rug, a 126,85 l-sq.-ft., zippered greensward of AstroTurf that the locals fondly call Mardi Grass. Also the biggest set of TV tubes: six superscreens, each 22 ft. wide by 26 ft. high, suspended from a 75-ton gondola, which afford the farthest-out viewer in the cheapest, loftiest seat a closeup of a cheerleader or an instant replay of a football fumble.

The elliptically shaped main arena (known as a "squircle") can be switched from a football stadium that can seat 76,791 Super Bowl fans to a compact configuration for 20,000 basketball rooters. Automated bleachers move on rails from the east side of the dome toward the permanently anchored stands on the west side, while other stands move in from either end to surround the basketball court, bringing the closest seat to within 9 ft. of the action.

Thus, like Alice in a concrete Wonderland, the squircle can grow or shrink to accommodate such varied attractions as the circus, opera, ice shows, rock concerts, religious rallies and national conventions.

Last year the biggest-ever Lions International convention in the U.S. brought more than 40,000 people to the dome for five days. Even when it was not in use, guided tours of the megastructure packed in 200,000 visitors last year at $2.50 a head. The building's varied facilities lured 73,350 convention delegates to New Orleans.

The financial impact of the Superdome is felt far beyond its walls. The average Super Bowl patron will, by conservative estimate, spend $100 a day. The dome last year directly generated more than $2 million in tax revenues, plus an estimated $3 million from a 4% city hotel/motel tax that was levied to help pay for the behemoth. Thus while the building ran $5.5 million in the red. it brought in more than lagniappe to the local economy.

One indication of the Superdome's viability is that Abram Nicholas Pritzker agreed last July to take over management of the dome. A.N. Pritzker and his family are among the nation's biggest landowners. Their holdings in the Hyatt hotel chain (76 in the U.S., 24 abroad) are only part of their wealth. With an $80 million stake in the Hyatt across the street, the 82-year-old Pritzker created the Hyatt Management Corp. to run the building and installed as its president Denzil Skinner, 50, a crisp, urbane executive who had spent 19 years running public assembly areas from Virginia to Indiana. Skinner has virtually halved the staff, and replaced politically appointed executives and contractors with trained managers. "What can be done with this building," says Skinner, "is limited only by the imagination."

It is, of course, primarily a sports palace, and team owners love the place. Barry Mendelson, 34, New York-born executive vice president of the Jazz, points out that "there was no real longtime legacy of pro basketball in the South." Yet the club has broken N.B.A. attendance records five times. The football Saints, whose mundane performance on the field is partially offset by their spectacular half-time shows, are also incurable domophiles. and have a ten-year lease on the Poydras palazzo.

The dome's most important contribution to New Orleans is its location: smack in the middle of downtown.

Whereas some other cities, notably Detroit, have plunked sports stadiums in the suburbs, Louisiana decided early on that the dome's maximum economic benefit could be realized by placing it in a seedy, archaic industrial area (which is no more). Most of all, its accessibility benefits the cus tomer; indeed, it was designed as a "people place." As the plans evolved, it was agreed that it would not be just a foot ball palace, but a multipurpose sporting-business-conven tion-cultural center that could revitalize the sensual, sickly Blanche DuBois of cities.

New Orleans is one of the nation's poorest cities (21.6% of its citizens live below the poverty line). Yet Orleanians and visitors have always lavished money on sport, entertainment, betting and booze. To assure landing an N.F.L.

franchise, Louisiana voters in November 1966 amended the constitution and overwhelmingly approved a $35 million bond issue to finance the dome. The cost subsequently rose to $163 million.

As a result, the project stirred controversy as hot and heavy as a tabas-coed gumbo. However, as silver-haired Mayor Moon Landrieu, one of the dome's founding fathers, points out, in terminable legal challenges and investigations failed to produce a single indictment or even a documented charge of hanky-panky (though in Huey Long country it is hard to believe some politicians did not profit, at least indirectly, from the project). However, Le Maire insists, "Only politicians could have put this thing together. It could never have been built by a blue ribbon commission. Sure, we made mistakes, but I think history will vindicate us. The dome would cost $500 million to build today. I don't think any other city will have the courage and imagination to build anything like it again."

Its catalytic effect is manifest. As far as outside investors are concerned, it is The Superdome Named Desire.

The building is credited to a considerable extent for the biggest construction boom in New Orleans history: $1.5 billion worth to date. There are now 10,000 quality hotel rooms within a short stroll of the dome. The most convenient of all is the 1,200-room Hyatt Regency, which has a broad elevated ramp leading to the Superdome's second level over Loyola Avenue. There is a new 1,200-room Hilton that has enjoyed the most successful first year of any hotel in the chain. Near by is a 42-story Marriott, which has 1,000 rooms and is adding 414 more. It will be topped by a new 50-story, 1,200-room Sheraton. Four major new office buildings have gone up in the revivified district. Only one corporation in Fortune's 500, the Lykes shipping and steel concern, has headquarters in New Orleans (v. ten in Houston, four in Atlanta) but this, too, may change if this exuberant, graceful city can reassert its unique identity.

For "the city that care forgot," tourism has traditionally been the second biggest money-spinner after its port, the nation's second busiest. The French Quarter, its major magnet, is a trap, not an attraction, a mart of sleazy sex shows, watered whisky and jaded jazz.

However, New Orleans still has some of the best restaurants in the U.S., and some elegant hotels outside the dome area (most notably, the Pont-chartrain), which theoretically can only get better with the influx of well-heeled visitors that Superdome events are attracting.

If it takes French bread and circuses to lead New Orleans out of hell.

let the game go on.

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