When the Nationwide Collegiate Athletic Affiliation (NCAA) arrives in San Antonio for the annual males’s championship matches in April, it should carry 4 basketball groups, coaches and workers, and draw tens of 1000’s of followers and cameras.
“One crew” will likely be prepared for them.
“I got here up with the phrase ‘one crew,’ and it’s actually easy — on the finish of the day, no matter the place all of our paychecks come from, our objective is easy,” stated Steve Zito, assistant director of conference and sports activities services on the Alamodome.
“It’s to supply a secure, pleasant, clear facility the place we’re creating lifelong reminiscences, and all people needs to return again.”
The NCAA Males’s Remaining 4 is scheduled for April 5-7 on the Alamodome, with fan occasions beginning April 4 all through downtown.
Zito oversees a full-time metropolis workers of 66 folks on the Alamodome, and for a minimum of the final 12 months, they and a crew of contractors have been fixing up San Antonio’s multipurpose stadium for one of many largest sporting occasions of the 12 months.
Main upgrades
In actuality, all of the plans and preparation started in 2018, the day after the NCAA chosen San Antonio for the 2025 Males’s Remaining 4, Zito stated.
In 2023, Metropolis Council accredited a proposal for over $29 million for main upgrades to the Alamodome after spending $65.5 million on main renovations in 2018.
The ability that has hosted every thing from music live shows and motorsports occasions to market reveals and soccer video games in its 32-year historical past — in addition to a number of Remaining 4 occasions — is sort of prepared.
To make the dome shine for the anticipated 72,000 ticket holders, the workers has been performing some primary however wanted cleansing and portray the outside.
Work crews pressure-washed all of the concrete, and all of that work has been ongoing, Zito stated. “Preparing for the Remaining 4 is a each day prevalence.”
Already full are structural repairs to the Alamodome’s distinct concrete masts, metal trusses, keep cables and masonry partitions.
This week, crews with the overall contractor Skanska are ending up 18 new luxurious suites and a brand new prep kitchen on the membership degree of the dome which made their debut throughout Monster Jam on Saturday. That brings the entire variety of suites to 70.
The suites are outfitted with meals and beverage serving areas, televisions, in-suite seating and stadium seating. Alamodome suites for the 2018 Remaining 4 have been reported to have bought for over $55,000 every within the days main as much as the occasion.
The nosebleed seats are getting particular remedy, too. As a result of the very high ground of the Alamodome was by no means absolutely completed, Zito stated, a mission so as to add new flooring, lighting, paint and concession stands has accomplished that a part of the world.
Within the locker rooms, new lighting and carpeting was put in a number of months in the past earlier than soccer season, and energy retailers have been put in in every participant’s locker.
New tech on the dome
For ticket holders, new expertise has been added to make safety screening quicker as they enter the Alamodome. No extra emptying your pockets or submitting to bag searches. “Actually, you may stroll via with out having to do all of that,” Zito stated.
However particularly after the current terrorism incident in New Orleans, nobody is taking safety frivolously.
“We simply return and we glance and analyze our plan, and if there are changes that must be made, we make them,” Zito stated. “There’s a great quantity of precautions which are made that no person even is aware of about.
Throughout the subsequent few weeks, a brand new sound system can also be stepping into on the Alamodome, he added. Upgrades to tools for broadcast manufacturing functionality and signage has already been finished.
Within the final two weeks earlier than the Remaining 4, however after the UIL Boys Basketball State Match March 6-8, a contractor will begin putting in 21,000 short-term seats for the large occasion.
“They really will construct out over our seats and convey these short-term seats nearer to the court docket,” Zito stated.
Since June, all of the entities concerned in producing the Remaining 4, together with NCAA officers, have been assembly month-to-month to provide you with to-do lists.
“There’s an amazing effort and time that goes into the coordination,” Zito stated. “However man, whenever you see us on TV and all of the media consideration and the dome within the background or the highlights of various issues …I at all times stated after I cease getting goosebumps on my arms … would be the final time I work.”
Zito in cost
That will be a putting finish to a wealthy and diverse profession for a person like Zito, who opened the Alamodome in 1993 because the director of engineering and operations and safety and later facility supervisor.
“I used to be right here for the primary [Final Four] in ‘98,” he stated.
After eight years, Zito went to work for the San Antonio Spurs and later returned to the Alamodome in 2017 as common supervisor, simply in time to assist host the 2018 Males’s Remaining 4.
“We had lots of work to do to only get the constructing prepared … and except for $65 million value of initiatives, there was loads to be finished, and we have been auditioning, in essence, for upcoming Remaining Fours,” he stated. “We will need to have finished fairly good.”
Town has hosted the lads’s occasion 4 instances — in 1998, 2004, 2008 and 2018 — and the ladies’s in 2002, 2010 and 2021.
In 2021, through the COVID pandemic, San Antonio hosted your complete girls’s regional semifinals, the originally-awarded Remaining 4 and championship sport.
“We have been artistic, and we labored actually shut and laborious with the NCAA and SALOC [San Antonio Local Organizing Committee], and we confirmed them what we in San Antonio are all about,” he stated.
A Massachusetts native, Zito acquired his first job within the enterprise whereas a sports activities administration pupil on the College of Massachusetts in Amherst.
“I had seen an advert for a popcorn hawker for the [1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles], so I placed on a pair of chinos and an oxford shirt, and put a resume in a backpack, and I acquired on my bike and rode 18 miles and pulled right into a gate at Harvard stadium,” he stated.
He was made assistant supervisor of concessions and novelty operations.
After that gutsy begin and thru his lengthy profession in venue administration, Zito additionally labored in Boston, Portland, New York Metropolis and Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
At present, he works with Patricia Muzquiz-Cantor, director of the town’s Conference and Sports activities Services Division. The division additionally runs the Henry B. González Conference Heart, Lila Cockrell Theater and Carver Cultural Heart Neighborhood Heart.
San Antonio will host the Ladies’s NCAA Remaining 4 in 2029, however was bypassed for the lads’s occasion in 2031.
San Antonio Sports activities President and CEO Jenny Carnes has stated that for the NCAA to award the Remaining 4 to San Antonio within the coming years, the group would need to see a “reimagined” Alamodome that may stand as much as newer buildings throughout the nation.
That reimagining may occur, with Zito in place to notch one other profession spotlight, if the town’s plan goes ahead to ascertain a sports activities leisure district centered round a brand new Spurs enviornment and a greater dome.
“I believe the concept of a sports activities district is unbelievable,” he stated. “We haven’t actually been concerned in that however relying the place all of it goes, we stay up for it taking place.”
