Columbus Sports Commission helped change image, landscape of city | Michael Arace
The official 20th anniversary date for the Greater Columbus Sports Commission is today, June 27.
It was 25 years ago, though, when Linda Logan was recruited by the Columbus Convention & Visitors Bureau to serve as its director of sports marketing. She was asked to do the advanced scouting, so to speak, for something bigger.
Logan typed out a wish list when she arrived on the shores of the Scioto and Olentangy Rivers in 1997.
By that time, Logan was already an experienced sports administrator. She had worked for 10 years in Kansas City, where she facilitated relationships with various entities – the K.C. Convention Center, the Big Eight Conference, Kemper Arena, and so forth.
Kansas City, the longtime home of the NCAA’s headquarters, knew how to get sports business. Indianapolis aspired to be in the vanguard of the business; it lured the NCAA by the end of the 1990s and remade the city’s image with sports of all levels, both amateur and professional.
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The tug of war to be the sports king of the Midwest was going on when Logan got to Columbus, which was known as an cow town that was deserted on weeknights and weekends.
Logan typed out her wish list:
A new 1,000-room hotel connected to the convention center.
More daily flights to the city.
A good working relationship between the downtown and Ohio State arenas.
Community consensus on the “Columbus Area Sports Commission.”
Sufficient funding, and realistic expectations, for said commission.
The last item on the wish list had to do with creating a culture by spreading the word: Teamwork was vital in every bidding process; a point person or persons could facilitate these processes; and everyone involved needed to project a good image for the city.
Logan, who started with a staff of one (herself) and has been at the helm of the sports commission since its founding, recently rediscovered the old wish list in one of her filing cabinets. It was like a time machine.
Twenty-five years ago, Ohio State was about to open Value City Arena, Nationwide Arena was being put on the drawing board and university and downtown leaders had different ideas on the city’s growth trajectory (which is to say their relationship was frosty). The Arena District was the site of a recently demolished state penitentiary.
And the Greater Columbus Sports Commission did not exist.
Twenty-five years later, the Schottenstein Center and Nationwide are under the same management umbrella (because it was silly for a city this size to open two huge arenas, which is part of this story). The site and surrounding area of the former Ohio State Penitentiary is now a string of pearls (Nationwide, Huntington Park, Lower.com Field) amid swaths of activity.
The sports commission is funded by a public-private partnership that includes 70 companies, many of them downtown. Logan is president and CEO of the outfit. Long live the queen.
She and her staff have helped book and host nearly 600 events, large and small, over the past two decades. These events have run the gamut of 45 different sports. They have generated an estimated $625 million in visitor spending.
They’re known for their successful bids on the big productions – 2013 President’s Cup, 2015 NHL All-Star Game, 2018 NCAA women’s basketball Final Four, 2021 NCAA Division I Volleyball Championship. But the big productions do not add up to the sum of the smaller productions.
For instance, the commission has a good relationship with USA Volleyball and USA Fencing, among other governing bodies that return to Columbus, year after year. They enjoy the big-city vibrancy of the place and the Midwestern conviviality of their hosts. And they know their events will be well run.
“When you’re talking about realistic expectations, you think up here and aspire,” Logan said, holding her hand above her head. "You do the work down here, and try to make a difference. Some people want us to bid on the Olympics, but if we can hit one or two of our three goals with any event, we consider it a success.”
From the start, their goals have been these: Enhance the image of the city; enrich the quality of life for everyone who lives and works in Central Ohio; and drive economic and social development through sports.
Logan is the smile on the face of Columbus sports. She has embraced leaders in every walk of city life – big business, small business, charities, non-profits, educational entities, the Buckeyes, the Blue Jackets and so on, and on – and gotten everyone to carry the city’s flag, together.
Over the years her staff has expanded and contracted (it now numbers 11, post-pandemic) but the culture has remained the same. A big part of that culture is a sisterhood of women who are polished to shine as they go forward, in whatever walk of life.
In August, the second Hilton tower, with more than 1,000 rooms, will open next to the convention center. It’s a game-changer. It opens the city to a larger class of events that need both a convention space and an arena at the same time.
Thus, another box on Logan's 25-year-old wish list is being checked.
But what about more daily flights to the city?
“It’s improving,” Logan said.
The woman isn't a miracle worker, you know.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Greater Columbus Sports Commission: 20 years bringing top events here
