Super Bowl City
In preparation to host its 11th National Football League Super Bowl game, New Orleans is fortifying its transportation infrastructure to welcome a hundred thousand football fans
By Rick Hathaway | Director, New Orleans Department of Public Works
When Super Bowl LIX kicks off in February next year, it will be a major milestone for New Orleans in several ways. It will mark the 11th time the city has served as host of a Super Bowl, tying a record held by Miami. Those who attend will enjoy the event in the extensively renovated Caesars Superdome, which will be celebrating its 50th anniversary.
Also, the event will shine a light on recent investments in the city’s transportation network, which will deliver a smoother, more efficient experience for the attendees and many thousands of other fans, friends and families. New Orleans has earned a reputation as the nation’s premier “host city,” with hundreds of public events that in 2023 attracted more than 40 million visitors, who spent more than $18 billion in the city. [Source]. To support all those visitors and to maintain the city’s charm for our residents, planning and implementing transportation improvements is essential. Our event-driven construction projects are on tight deadlines, but they’ll remake infrastructure in ways that will serve residents for decades to come.
Tackling Poydras
Executing much-needed improvements to the city’s main business artery – the mile-long Poydras Street – has become a critical priority for our Super Bowl preparations. Poydras Street extends west from the Mississippi River, past office towers, hotels, restaurants and residential buildings fronting the Superdome. It is key to economic vitality for the entire metro region and is a regional employment hub for southeast Louisiana as a whole.
Poydras Street has been a thoroughfare for more than two centuries. In the late 1970s it was updated and widened to integrate the newly built Superdome into the cityscape. Since that time, no significant upgrades had been endeavored on Poydras Street until this year. Our team has worked with contractors to accelerate work on this street because it is the gateway to the Superdome and the backbone of mobility in that part of the city. Importantly, the Poydras Street improvements were among the NFL’s must-haves as they collaborated with the New Orleans Super Bowl Host Committee, which is led by the New Orleans Saints and the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation. The Committee and the League are keen on creating an outstanding experience for visitors, with safety and efficiency at the forefront.
Working on Poydras Street involves the same traffic management challenges facing any major downtown construction project. In our worksite, we have a Superdome that constantly holds events of various sizes, so we cannot seal the street off completely without disrupting mobility and event access. The largest events in a typical year are New Orleans Saints football games, which require us to clean up roadways and remove barricades to make way for heavy traffic before and after the game, then shift back into construction mode after the event concludes.
We also, somewhat uniquely, must deal with the threat of damaging winds and flooding from hurricanes and other major storms. As soon as a significant storm enters the Gulf of Mexico, the federal Homeland Security office in City Hall sets up the Emergency Operations Center and convenes twice-daily meetings with city department heads and representatives from the armed forces and other federal agencies. If the threat level rises, our team executes a plan to secure construction sites before the storm is expected to hit. For example, with Hurricane Francine in September 2024, our teams filled open excavation areas with rock topped with asphalt for stability to provide usable escape routes for vehicles. We also removed wooden barriers and other objects that high winds can turn into deadly projectiles.
Our contractors are accustomed to such circumstances and are very responsive and experienced at securing worksites. Their contracts allow for short-term disruptions like this in the project schedules and, in many cases, work on affected roads can resume in just a few days.
Expanding Footprints, Rising Expectations
The footprint of the 2025 Super Bowl will be much bigger than that of the 2013 event, which was largely restricted to the Superdome vicinity. This time around, there will be companion events, all of which highlight the need for infrastructure improvements. If we see that certain streets may be used extensively for getting people to and from events, we add these streets to our project list.
Many vehicle parking facilities will be available within a half-mile of the Superdome, from numerous ground-level lots to large parking garages. To meet the needs of thousands of walkers, we are strategically repairing sidewalks and street crossings to improve safety. We are engaging small business/DBE contractors to handle sidewalk repairs downtown and in the French Quarter.
We know that not everyone can, or wants to, walk, so we will have shuttle buses circling throughout the area. Also, for the first time, we’re creating a rideshare hub at a public park in front of City Hall, about a block away from the Superdome. There will be music and food at this rideshare hub for visitors’ and residents’ convenience.
Our team also is responding to mobility requirements related to high-profile visitors and exclusive events. For example, we are running shuttles from the Superdome over to the LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine, which will be hosting invitation-only events in their parking lots.
North of the Superdome, we’re working on improvements to a street in the Gentilly area, which connects our historic Lakefront Airport to Interstate 10 highway. We understand the importance of making a great impression on these high-profile guests, so they’ll return again and again, bring world-class entertainment to the city, host private events and contribute to our local economy.
Super-Gras Fusion
Amidst the buzz about Super Bowl, we haven’t lost sight of Fat Tuesday – Mardi Gras, which is on March 4, 2025 — not long after the Super Bowl. We are planning for some Mardi Gras activities to start before the Super Bowl, then be paused, and resume after the Super Bowl. Our planned roadway and sidewalk improvements in the French Quarter will prepare the area for Super Bowl traffic and serve as the nucleus of the Mardi Gras festival.
The big game kicks off here at the Superdome on February 9, 2025. We are excited to showcase the improvements we are making to our city and we are ready to host an excellent experience to our many visitors.
Lessons We’ve Learned to Date
- Start as early as possible – Knowing funding needs to be secured for any project, it’s best to start as early as possible to align finances and resources.
- Think broadly, get others involved – From the outset, think about the constituencies you’ll need to engage. Ask others about who should be involved. Early alignment keeps project coordination from fraying.
- Line up your resources – Have resources in mind. There are a limited number of contractors in New Orleans, and we called on both the largest and smallest. They’ve kept our projects on track with the quality we expect.
- Experiment and improve – In late October, Taylor Swift will perform here for three nights as part of her Eras tour, with perhaps 150,000 people attending. By that time, we will have set up our downtown rideshare hub and completed our roadway improvements involving the Lakefront Airport. We will see how our improvements perform for Taylor and make any necessary tweaks needed by the Super Bowl.
- Inform and excite – The public needs to be informed of construction schedules and impacts. Keeping the public informed puts any disruptions or delays into context, while keeping them excited about the upcoming events, and reminding them of the long-term benefits these projects provide.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Clinton “Rick” Hathaway is the Director of the Department of Public Works for the city of New Orleans, Louisiana. Appointed in December 2023, he oversees five divisions that are responsible for maintaining about 1,547 miles of streets and 149 bridges in the city. Born in the city, with roots in the Lower Ninth Ward, Rick leverages his professional background in civil engineering and construction management to improve the city’s public infrastructure.
Prior to assuming this role, Rick served as a transportation section manager and construction program manager for a national engineering consulting firm. He also worked for the city from 1982 to 1994 in what was then called the Department of Streets.
He graduated from the University of New Orleans in 1982 with a degree in Civil Engineering.