UI, surrounding cities gear up for game days

IOWA CITY - There's even a plan for portable toilets.

More than 300 of them are used on University of Iowa property for tailgaters during Hawkeye home football games, and their locations are carefully considered.

“We kind of tease and we call it our ‘perfectly placed port-a-potty plan,'” said Paula Jantz, the UI's associate athletics director for operations and event management.

It's just one example of the tremendous amount of planning needed to get ready for seven home football games each year, including the season that kicks off Sept. 3 with Iowa playing host to Tennessee Tech at Kinnick Stadium.

With the games and a good chunk of the tailgating on its property, the UI does most of the planning. But local governments, particularly their public safety departments, and area businesses also must prepare for the crush of people coming to the Iowa City area.

Kinnick Stadium seats 70,585 people and typically sells out. Up to 30,000 additional people tailgate in the area around the stadium each game.

To put that in perspective, Iowa City has 67,862 residents, according to the recent census. At 100,000 people, the football-related crowd would just edge out Davenport as Iowa's third-largest city.

A 2010 study estimated that seven Iowa football homes games have more than a $100 million economic impact on Johnson County.

“We basically gear up for a large city on a Thursday,” said Jantz, “and then we provide all the services that you would have in a city - law enforcement, entertainment, food, traffic control ... medical, emergency - and then we wrap that down Sunday afternoon when we clean everything up, and then we start the process again the Thursday before the next home game.”

Most of the planning occurs in the spring and summer, although in some cases it starts soon after the conclusion of the previous football season.

Jantz couldn't put a number on how many work hours are spent on home-game planning, except to say it's a lot, and she estimated 80 percent of her current workload involves football.

The UI's parking, hospital, facilities management, public safety and athletics department staff do most of the work.

But others are brought in to help, and outside agencies like police departments and ambulance services are involved.

There's a separate plan for just about everything, Jantz said. What to do with the portable toilets and more than 400 trash containers is an example of just how detailed it gets. There's also parking, traffic control, concessions, public safety and more.

More than 700 people work on game days, Jantz said.

The UI also has contingency plans for emergencies. It reviews those annually, has personnel attend security-related conferences and practices things like evacuation procedures and operating the command center, Jantz said.

Officers from surrounding agencies help with security at Kinnick and in tailgating areas, and a meeting is held before each season to go over assignments and to talk about issues like traffic and potential emergencies.

Johnson County communities also must prepare for the season, although not nearly to the extent the UI does.

“We've done it so many years that it just sort of falls natural,” said University Heights police Chief Ron Fort.

The small town is just west of Kinnick Stadium, and all five of its police officers and as many of its 10 reserves work on the days of home football games, with traffic being their biggest concern.

Construction can throw hurdles in front of well-planned traffic-control measures, though.

“I have made the statement many times that all civil engineers graduated from (Iowa State University in) Ames, so they make sure that anything going on in Iowa City always impacts football,” Coralville Police Chief Barry Bedford said.

In scheduling officers and patrols, the Iowa City Police Department will look at what time a game starts and who the opponent is, Sgt. Denise Brotherton said. Night games or contests against rivals like Wisconsin and Iowa State can bring a rowdier crowd than, say, Indiana.

Neal Roth, the general manager at the Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites by Coral Ridge Mall in Coralville, not only looks at the schedule but tries to predict how Iowa and its opponents will do to help set the hotel's budget. A couple of early season losses by Iowa or an opponent like Michigan, which comes to Iowa City Nov. 5, could dampen enthusiasm for that game and cause some people to stay home.

“A good hotel operator, they have to be a fan of football,” Roth said.

Joe McLaughlin, owner of Coralville's Old Chicago restaurant, which is less than a mile from Kinnick Stadium, keeps records on who is playing, game times and even hour-by-hour sales on game days. He uses that information to help him schedule staff and order food, beverages and supplies.

“We have a pretty good track record on the schedule,” he said.