Is hosting big game a win for Phoenix suburb?

updated 7:14 p.m. ET Jan. 30, 2008

GLENDALE, Ariz. - Landing the Super Bowl is making the huge bet made on sports-related development in this Phoenix suburb look like a winner. But it could be years before local taxpayers find out whether the tens of millions of dollars in debt they could be on the hook for turns out to be a wise investment.

The NFL will play its biggest game in a stadium that didn't exist when the rights for the 2008 game were awarded five years ago. The sleek $455 million facility opened two years ago on what was little more than a hardscrabble patch of cotton and alfalfa fields 16 miles northwest of downtown Phoenix.

Voters in Maricopa County approved it, giving the NFL's Arizona Cardinals a home to replace the team's previous home at Arizona State University's stadium in Tempe. But the real payoff always was viewed as the bonanza that would come from hosting Super Bowls after the NFL made it clear the ASU stadium used for the 1996 game was too shabby for another championship.

This week, as football players, fans and celebrities descend on Glendale, city leaders are celebrating their new stature among tourist destinations. Their experience serves as a prime example of the transformative abilities of professional sports, including the estimated $400 million windfall that boosters claim comes from hosting a Super Bowl.

During the past few years Glendale has scraped away many of the old farms on its far west side to make room for a sports and entertainment district that will pull in business once slated for Phoenix.

Next to the football stadium, developers recently built a new hockey arena for the NHL's Phoenix Coyotes, along with high-end specialty shops, restaurants with valet parking, and a huge fountain that squirts water in time with rock music. Nearby, the city broke ground in November on a spring training facility for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago White Sox.

Almost at once, Glendale's urban center moved from a quaint row of antique shops in its historic district to a patchwork of new developments on the west side. "The community decided they wanted to be a little bit more," said Glendale city manager Ed Beasley.

Beasley and other Glendale leaders fought hard for this, beating out bids from Phoenix and two suburbs on its east side, Mesa and Tempe, for the state-funded football stadium.

But the city issued or guaranteed about $150 million in debt for the hockey arena and has made big infrastructure investments in the area, according to Deputy City Manager Art Lynch.

Glendale's population grew by 48 percent in the past decade to nearly 250,000, landing it on the U.S. Census Bureau's list of fastest-growing cities along with Phoenix and several of its other suburbs.

That growth has been accompanied by a jump in the market value of taxable property to $10.3 billion last year from $7.5 billion in 2002. And while home foreclosures have been spiking in recent months, Lynch notes that even with the increase in the city's sports-related debt, there hasn't been an increase in property taxes in 13 years, and in seven of those years, the rate was reduced.

During the past six weeks, Hampton Inn, Residence Inn and a SpringHill Suites opened hotels in Glendale. The combined 700 new rooms almost doubled the amount of hotel space the city had to offer last year.

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