"When crowds ascend upon Rupp Arena as they did recently for the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament one weekend and for the KHSAA Boys' Sweet 16 the following weekend, the teams cutting down the nets aren't the only winners. Many businesses in the area also have the chance to step up their game as customers pour in to watch the competitions.
"Thursday, the first day of the NCAA, we did one day's business per hour, every hour for seven hours," said Jim Sawyer, owner of Sawyer's in Triangle Center. "We were feeding people every 15 to 20 seconds."
The combination of the games for the NCAA Tournament and the Sweet 16 brought 157,000 people through the turnstiles at Rupp, according to Carl Hall, the director of arena management for Rupp and the Lexington Center.
"We are a huge impact to downtown; we are a huge asset to the whole city," Hall said, while showing concern not to sound braggadocios.
Statistics for the month of March and the first quarter of '07 have given Rupp Arena management reason to boast, whether they want to or not. Attendance at Rupp from December 24 though March 24 was 502,654, up from 365,600 during the same time the previous year, a 38 percent increase in attendance in the quarter. Granted, Hall said, Rupp didn't host the NCAAs last year, but the rabid non-UK basketball fans that packed Rupp during the first weekend of March Madness made up only 44 percent of the extra attendance over Q1 of 2006.
Those crowds didn't go unnoticed to area businesses, such as deSha's, which caught a perfect storm during the second round of the NCAA, a Saturday that was also St. Patrick's Day. That combination gave the restaurant its largest ever day in sales, according to the restaurant's Tony Attwood.
The restaurant, on the corner of Broadway and Main, opened an hour early each day with added breakfast food to catch more of the downtown hotel crowd before they headed to Rupp. The Hartford, a major NCAA Tournament sponsor and financial services company, rented out The Horse and Barrel, a pub attached to deSha's, for gatherings throughout the first and second round. CBS, the network carrying the tournament, treated its crew to a midnight deSha's buffet after the marathon-like day that is the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Bourbon and Toulouse, a Cajun restaurant with its main location on Euclid in Chevy Chase, saw booming business at its downtown spot that is usually weekday lunch only, according to owners Will Pieratt and Kevin Heathcoat.
"We were rockin' and rollin'," Pieratt said. "Thursday we did about three times our normal business, and Saturday (a day we aren't usually open downtown) we did twice (the regular weekday lunch)."
While the two weekends of basketball tournaments proved prosperous for area businesses, deSha's Attwood said events at Rupp can have their drawbacks, as people not attending the events often steer clear of downtown.
"It's almost a double-edged sword, because when there is something going on at Ruppwe'll get the good business, it's just a different kind of business. Once the games go away, we get the regulars back," Attwood said.
The impact of the visitors to town could be felt beyond businesses located within a stone's throw of Rupp, according to Carl Landis, marketing director of Fayette Mall. During both weekends, a walk through the mall was all a person needed to figure out which teams were sent to Rupp by the NCAA Selection Committee and which had climbed the ranks of Kentucky's high school basketball elite.
"You could tell what group was in the mall by their colors(and) what team they were supporting," Landis said.
Each year during the Sweet 16, which has been at Rupp each year for almost a decade and will call Lexington home until at least 2014, Fayette Mall has a special promotion to attract supporters and enthusiasts of Kentucky high school basketball to the mall.
In regard to sales numbers for the stores, Landis said, "On a traffic standpoint and crowds, yes we did see a considerable increase (in mall customers over a normal weekend) on both weekends."
Proximity of schools for the NCAA and Sweet 16 can play a role in the number of customers.
"You'll see fluctuations, and it really is kind of based onluck of the draw. If a team (that) loses is from far away, (their fans) tend to leave town right away," Landis said.
With three of the four schools — Louisville, Xavier and Ohio State — playing in the NCAA second round being within a reasonable drive to go home between rounds, this year's installment of the NCAA Tournament and the Sweet 16 meant a windfall for area businesses.
The soonest the NCAA's opening rounds can return to town is 2011, and Sawyer said it can't come soon enough. "We did UK's basketball season of beer in one weekend. It was phenomenal."
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