Chuck Finder: Penguins Return Should Boost City's Economy

Penguins return to the ice should have a major impact on city's economy
Thursday, July 14, 2005
By Chuck Finder, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Jeff Butya stood behind the bar of his restaurant-lounge yesterday and reveled in the moment. It was a great day for a hockey season-ticket holder. It was a great day for a proprietor whose living gets a considerable sports bounce from an NHL soon reopening for business.
"The world's great in Robinson," Butya crowed. "Hockey's settled. Dick Butkus is coming. The Steelers are around the corner. It's football, it's hockey, it's the flow of the way things should be.
"Life is looking up."
The apparent end to the 301-day NHL lockout was all the talk in his suburban corner of Pittsburgh, a city that lost a precise $1.6 million in tax revenues and an estimated $48 million in overall economic impact because the Penguins were dark for 40-plus nights this past fall and winter. Such losses were felt not only Downtown and throughout the city, but also to Butya's in Robinson -- where Butkus will be coaching nearby Montour High School football for a television reality show -- and beyond. No wonder everyone from patrons, pointing to the settlement stories on his lounge TVs, to a friend calling from Indianapolis couldn't stop buzzing about the same subject yesterday.

The pucks are back.

Mario Lemieux is set to return to Mellon Arena ice.
Hockey-loving North America's long refrigerated nightmare is over.
"I don't think it's going to be as hard getting the fan back as it was with baseball [after its 1994 strike]; a lot of fans, they went straight from baseball to NASCAR," said Butya, for 20 years a Penguins season-ticket holder and a gent whose business long has attracted Penguins front-office staff, coaches and players. "Hockey fans are a different breed. I get people coming in here all the time asking, 'What Penguins come in here?' Pittsburgh has a connection with their hockey players. Those months are long, too. You have nothing else to turn to.
"Just think of this winter," Butya added, "how long it would've been if the Steelers had lost?"
Perish the thought, economically speaking.

As it was, a successful Steelers season and two January playoff games wasn't enough to offset the bottom-line bleeding for some businesses Downtown, the city and the region as a whole. City Treasurer Richard Fees said the direct loss in amusement, parking and occupational taxes from a Penguins-less September to May came to $1.6 million. And, Fees added, "we can use every penny we can get." The Greater Pittsburgh Convention and Visitors Bureau estimate: a $48 million economic loss locally.
"Of course, that includes businesses in the area -- hotel revenue, restaurateurs, T-shirts, hats, ancillary things," said communications director Bev Morrow-Jones. "Having a sports team in town is big business. As long as the team is playing and they're putting people in seats, they're bringing visitors."

Linda Wilson could see the adverse effects at the Ramada, one block down Centre Avenue from Mellon Arena. The hotel, where she serves as group sales director, entertained far fewer guests from Buffalo, Toronto and Philadelphia who would come to town when their teams visited the Penguins. Its Ruddy Duck Lounge likewise served far fewer diners and drinkers on hockey nights in Pittsburgh.
"It was hard September through January, when we were losing both room revenue and lounge revenue," Wilson said. "Obviously, we can never make up the revenues. The number on that would be priceless."
Yet she chose to look at the positives, at the future. The hotel plans to reopen as a Double Tree around Labor Day, when the Ruddy Duck will reopen as a still-unnamed new restaurant and lounge.
"We'll be ready to go for the hockey season," Wilson said. "I can tell you, it's good to have hockey back. I'm ready. Drop the puck. I'll drop it, if they need any help."
The Souper Bowl on Fifth Avenue never opened its top and bottom floors this past winter, as it usually does on the nights of Penguins home games. So, part-owner Jim Sypherd is equally as ecstatic about an NHL resumption as is owner Kevin Joyce of the Carlton restaurant, where, beyond a dismal fourth quarter of 2004 and first quarter of 2005, fewer pregame steaks translate into fewer staff, less business for the food retailers from whom he buys and on down the local-impact line. Yet Joyce frets about just that, a local-impact issue still hanging -- a new Penguins arena to ensure the team remains here.
"Now that we've got it solved on the global level, we have to solve Pittsburgh's problem," Joyce said. The Penguins are "something that keeps us a major-league city, even though we're hanging on by our fingernails. Now that the [lockout's] over, we can start rebuilding this sport in Pittsburgh."

(Chuck Finder can be reached at cfinder@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1724.)