Tampa Bay no longer needs a Super Bowl to legitimize itself as a vibrant metropolitan area, yet the NFL's decision to bring the game here for the fourth time in 2009 is reason to celebrate. It reaffirms how attractive this region is to the rest of the country and offers another opportunity to show how we are progressing. Since the Super Bowl last came here in 2001, downtown Tampa has become the city's hottest neighborhood. St. Petersburg's lively waterfront and downtown attracts people of all ages. Clearwater Beach is undergoing a transformation. If area leaders keep cooperating as they have in recent years, the Super Bowl will help freshen our image.
Tampa beat out Houston, Atlanta and Miami. Along with its reliably good winter weather and massive media market, the Tampa Bay area has a good reputation as a Super Bowl host, with plenty of attractions and outdoor activities and enough top restaurants and other venues to please players, their families, sponsors and fans.
Though the game is years away, officials need to move quickly on several big projects and maintain a united front. Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio has one more reason to complete downtown's Riverwalk, a promenade connecting the parks, hotels and concert halls along the waterfront. She should decide on whether to convert the old federal courthouse into a new arts museum, for that piece will determine where and how the city builds a larger cultural arts district. She also will need to become more involved, as she promised, in improving intra-city mass transit service. Traffic congestion marred Tampa's last Super Bowl - and that was even before new downtown condominiums started sprouting.
Tampa also should work with other cities in the region on transportation, tourism and other facets of hosting Super Bowl festivities. The Pinellas beaches, parks, art museums, marina facilities and shops and restaurants are part of the overall package. Fans will discover that the physical landscape has matured in two vibrant downtowns, that the arts and an increasingly diverse population are enriching social life, and that Tampa Bay is growing in stature even as it remains a comfortable place to live. Oh, yeah - and there's the game.
