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Would you spend $7,500 for three games of the best college basketball? How about $275? Reporter Perry Vandell breaks down the action on the tickets before the big games. Patrick Breen/azcentral.com
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Downtown Phoenix gets ready to host the NCAA Final Four Fan Fest and house the teams as they play in nearby Glendale for the NCAA Final Four games. David Wallace/azcentral.com
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The court for the NCAA Final Four tournament is put together at the University of Phoenix stadium in Glendale, Arizona. Thomas Hawthorne/azcentral
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The massive scoreboard known as “Colussus TV” is installed at University of Phoenix Stadium for the upcoming NCAA Final Four games. David Wallace/azentral.com
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Mark Hubler, emergency manager for Glendale, talks about the Final Four on Feb. 28, 2017, in the Emergency Operation Center, Glendale.
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Which seats in the Final Four house are still available?
Downtown Phoenix gets ready for NCAA Final Four
Piece by piece, the court for the NCAA Final Four tournament is put together in Glendale
Scoreboard installed at University of Phoenix Stadium for Final Four
Preparing for the Final Four in Glendale
With a busy weekend packed with Final Four festivities, Phoenix Pride Festival, Diamondbacks opening day and more, Phoenix police and fire are gearing up.
A massive amount of technology, manpower and other resources are being dedicated to security efforts this weekend for Final Four festivities and other major events in central Phoenix.
The Phoenix police and fire departments invited media into their training facilities on Friday morning to showcase their security efforts.
More than 100,000 people are expected in the Phoenix area this weekend for the Final Four Fanfest at the Phoenix Convention Center and the March Madness Music Festival at Margaret T. Hance Park. More crowds will attend the Phoenix Pride Festival at Steele Indian School Park a few miles to the north, an event that includes a Sunday parade. Still more people will be filing in for Opening Day on Sunday for the Arizona Diamondbacks opening day at Chase Field.
Final Four comes to Arizona
Kevin Kalbrenner, assistant chief for the Phoenix Fire Department, led the tour around the Phoenix Regional Training Academy facilities.
“We’ve been planning this for a year or more,” Kalbrenner said. “I would say this is 85 percent planning, 15 percent reactionary. It’s mostly infrastructure driven, it’s mostly things you would expect when putting on a big event.’
‘RELATED:Final Four 2017 in Arizona: Music festival kicks off
Emergency medical equipment and facilities are housed on the first floor of the academy. Kalbrenner went over what the procedure is when there are “catastrophic events” at gatherings like this.
“I’ve told this group: ‘The best way to know what’s going on five minutes after an event is to know what was going on five minutes before an event,’ ” Kalbrenner said. “They would immediately begin to start to catch up with the incident, our regular 911 police and fire teams would respond, support that operation and we would go into a full-on emergency operations mode with the city where we would activate our emergency operations plan and get our city leaders in place to start factoring information from this team.”
The Phoenix Regional Training Academy has been built to be bomb-resistant, thanks to a grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
On the second floor is the main event: the Multi-Agency Coordination Center, also known as the MACC.
The MACC is a large room with tables set up all across the floor and monitors all along the walls. The room is divided into agencies from throughout the region, with each agency getting a table beneath a hanging sign carrying its name. On each table is a series of laptops being used by personnel monitoring their portion of the security coverage.
“There are between one-hundred and one-hundred-fifty people working here in the MACC,” said Phoenix fire Capt. Rob McDade. “We have active military members with us here to assist in case of a catastrophic event. They provide support for these events and work as our liaisons to the National Guard. If needed, they can even provide their own air support, in addition to the air support we have here from local agencies. Sunday is going to be this huge cosmic thing where everything culminates at once.”
According to Kalbrenner, traffic is the biggest logistical concern. There are only about 25,000 parking spaces downtown.
Valley Metro is encouraging people to use light eail or buses instead of cars to reach the events. The light-rail line runs close to all of the event locations. Valley Metro has adjusted weekend service to accommodate the events. Light rail will operate until 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday, and until midnight on Sunday and Monday.
MORE:Live at Final Four: Behind the scenes, ASU relishes its role
For Final Four games on Saturday and the National Championship game on Monday at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Valley Metro will provide special bus service to connect fans to the stadium from the Valley Metro Rail park-and-ride lot at 19th and Montebello avenues. Regular fare is required.
For more information, visit valleymetro.org.
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