With the new Levi’s Stadium
making its debut in Santa Clara to great fanfare, Fremont is gearing up
along with the rest of the Bay Area to take advantage of anticipated
economic spinoff.

While
Fremont may be 15.5 miles away from the 50-yard line, we expect to reap
our share of hotel guests and restaurant patrons attending home games,
the 2016 Super Bowl, and other stadium events.

Let’s start
with the numbers. Levi’s Stadium can seat 68,500 people. But for special
events such as the Super Bowl – it can fit up to 77,000. In addition to
49ers games, the stadium will host 8-12 large public events a year, and
many more corporate/private events. The schedule will kick off this
summer on August 2 with a match between the San Jose Earthquakes
and the Seattle Sounders. Additional “year one” events include College
Football (Cal Bears vs. Oregon), a December Bowl Game, and Wrestlemania
in March – considered to be the ultimate smack-down for attendance with a
projected audience of 70,000!

In the case of Wrestlemania, the
event requires 15,000 hotel rooms from San Francisco to Fremont to San
Jose, and all places in between. The 2016 Super Bowl will reach out as
far as the Tri-Valley to meet its 25,000 hotel room requirement. If
computed for multiple nights, this number jumps to 100,000. And, note
that the numbers are for what the NFL needs only for its operations. If
Aunt Betty and Uncle Joe come from Wisconsin to enjoy our Super Bowl
weather, those rooms are above and beyond. Needless to say, we wouldn’t
recommend planning a wedding for February 7, because all of the inns
will be full!

For small businesses hoping to tap into Super Bowl
activities, there will be numerous opportunities ranging from catering,
to printed materials, to transportation services. The largest event
attached to the Super Bowl is the NFL-sponsored “NFL Experience” which
will be held at Moscone Center. The Host Committee will put on a
“Business Connect” event to help local businesses learn more about these
opportunities.

As you can imagine, public transportation will
play a big role in getting people to events. Current estimates show that
for 49ers games, three-quarters of the attendees will arrive by car or
charter bus, and the rest will arrive by public transportation (train or
bus). Fremont residents will have two transit choices – either the ACE
Train, or express bus from BART. Once the Milpitas BART station opens,
you can take BART to Light Rail, and then exit directly in front of the stadium. This promises to be one of the easier Bay Area connections.

We
are tremendously excited for this new Silicon Valley amenity to become
interwoven with our business environment. Fremont has a history of
hosting visiting sports teams in its hotels, and we can expect that
activity to increase with such a large, first-class event facility.
We’re standing by to assist with any and all touchdown passes to make
this venue a regional success.