Rick Porter and Eunhwa Yang weigh in on ‘The Super Bowl from a Design Perspective

Rick Porter, the director of the Real Estate Development graduate program for the School of Building Construction said the Super Bowl is a win for local real estate. His program is a collaboration between all Georgia Tech Schools that deal with the built environment, and he stresses the connection between economic development and physical development.

“A unique aspect of Real Estate Development is that the primary commodity — real estate and land — is fixed,” he said. “You must bring demand to the commodity, you can’t take the commodity to the demand. From that perspective, big events like the Super Bowl are long term positive for the business of real estate development.”

Essentially, real estate development is a growth business, he said. “If you are in an area that is not growing, then development can’t really thrive. It depends upon us getting the word out. For events like this, it depends on bringing in people that have investable money into our space.”

“Ultimately, the neighborhood surrounding the stadium is, in fact, getting new development that it would not get without Mercedes-Benz and the Super Bowl.” Porter suggested that real estate developers may find opportunities in areas near the stadium that they didn’t notice before, thanks to the media surrounding the big game. 

But that’s not to say that a week’s worth of Super Bowl-related events will always feel like a win, he said. The development currently underway in the downtown area will experience problems.

“Active development sites are significant workplaces,” Porter said, “with many people coming and going on a daily basis. And not just construction workers, engineers, or on-site staff, but vehicles. Some of those are very large vehicles, given that material and products are being delivered regularly.”

Significant disruptions in the flow of people and vehicles during Super Bowl will naturally create schedule delays and other unpredictable setbacks, he said.

“That’s one of the things about real estate development, it is permanent. As a result of that it imposes on the community, and what you have to do is try to be sure that you’re mitigating that every step of the way. In my experience, we (real estate developers) are not always the best communicators.And when a big event like this comes, there’s no denying it’s going to be negative for a week.”

(2019, May 23). Rick Porter and Eunhwa Yang weigh in on ‘The Super Bowl from a Design Perspective. Retrieved from https://design.gatech.edu.