A CENTURY 21 Commercial Publication

Vol. II, Issue 9

Greetings

I am pleased to present you with The Real Estate Investment Journal®, a Century 21 electronic newsletter publication!  Delivered to commercial investors, consumers and sellers of investment property on a bi-monthly basis, this electronic newsletter is designed to give you the commercial real estate information that is important to you.  In each issue, you will find practical tips and articles related to investing in, selling, leasing or owning commercial properties, as well as the latest news on trends in the commercial real estate industry.  I hope that you enjoy this issue of The Real Estate Investment Journal®.  If I can be of any assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Feature

Cities Turn to Temporary Arenas To Offset Cost of Sporting Events

By Mike Esterl
Provided by RealEstateJournal.com

BERLIN — Nearly 10,000 fans packed a new stadium here to watch Italy best France in the world cup final Sunday.

But there were no brilliant saves by Italy’s Buffon on the field there, no ignoble red card for France’s Zidane.  And, in a few weeks, there will be no stadium, either.

It is the latest incarnation of an increasing trend for hosts of world-class athletic events: the disposable arena.  Designed to be taken down after the quadrennial soccer tournament ended, the Berlin stadium was a scaled-down replica of the storied Olympiastadion across town where the real final was played. Spectators watched the championship match on a huge TV screen at each end of the field.

World Cup sponsor Adidas AG built the temporary stadium for about €5 million (about $6.4 million) to flag its brand to soccer aficionados unable to secure or afford tickets for the actual games. Tickets sold for €3 — not the €120 to €600 that fans forked over for the final, which had long been sold out.

“This is a very big Lego playground,” says Otto Schweitzer, a marketing director with the German arm of Nüssli Group, a Swiss engineering company that oversaw the project and specializes in temporary

structures that can be taken apart quickly and reused.

From settings that show contests on TV screens to makeshift arenas that host live competitions, cities around the world are creating temporary venues to hold down costs and bring in extra tourist spending as the price of holding big events soars.

Corporate sponsors see the TV venues as an effective — and often cheap — form of advertising.  For the U.S. Open tennis tournament last year, American Express Co., for example, set up TV screens and temporary seating in public parks in Manhattan.  In Germany this summer, millions of soccer buffs watched the World Cup outdoors at corporate-sponsored “Fan Fests”; in 12 cities including a floating TV screen on the river in Frankfurt.  Adidas got the idea after watching soccer fans crowd into public-viewing areas in South Korea in 2002 when Korea co-hosted the World Cup.

Adidas went further.  In just seven weeks it built an oval stadium with a partial roof, using some 1,200 tons of steel, 20.5 miles of power cables, and 2.5 miles of water pipes.  The facade was a thin layer of synthetic fabric instead of the limestone used at the Olympiastadion, which dates …
(Continued on Page 2)