Money talks, so the hope is UFL won't walk

Since July, the Virginia Destroyers pro football team generated more than a million dollars in fresh money just within Chesapeake, according to that city's tourism office. Much of that was in hotel rooms and three buffets a day in the lobby restaurant.

Think the staff of the Norfolk Marriott Chesapeake, the team's home and headquarters for much of three months, is hoping the United Football League forges on a fourth season?

"They became a very big part of the hotel family," said Connie Brewer, the Marriott's sales director, "and they're missed greatly right now."

How much, really? Brewer and John Wuehrmann, the Destroyers assistant general manager, prefer to keep that between them. But let's guess $75 a night, slightly off the hotel's advertised rate, on an average of 55 rooms Wuehrmann says the team used for beds and office space during its time on Woodlake Drive.

We're at about $29k a week right there. Say feeding some 70 encamped players, coaches and support staff all week adds at least $20,000. Add that up. And remember that was in a five-game season abbreviated by two weeks.

You bet the Destroyers are missed.

They moved in, lived and worked peacefully behind the hotel in classroom trailers unused by the public school system, and spent plenty of money at gas stations, golf courses, malls and restaurants.

"They're a wonderful group of people," said Chesapeake's tourism director Kim Murden, whose office provided logistical support for the hotel and the team. "We'd certainly love to have them back."

Over in Virginia Beach, Chuck Thornton seconds that opinion.

As operator of the Sportsplex - his company leased it from the city two years ago - Thornton has done productive things. Steady use has come to a former ghost stadium, thanks in part to Thornton's investment of all-purpose turf and aggressive marketing.

And while a parade of youth soccer, high school football and field-hockey games on the fields next door pay bills, they don't create the jingle and buzz of the Destroyers.

The Sportsplex played host to three games, and more than 14,000 people turned out for the UFL championship, unheard of at a place with fewer than 7,000 permanent seats.

And most were of age to buy beer with its crazy, but customary, stadium markup.

Hello, windfall.

"We did very well," said Thornton, who under his lease got $7,500-per-game rent and paid the UFL $2 per ticketholder from revenue generated from his concessions operation.

"We can do 20,000 people; I think that's got to be our goal with temporary seating next year. This was all a big, new thing for everybody, and I think we showed we could do it."

People forget it takes a veritable village of police, fire marshals, parking shepherds, vendors, ticket tearers, hot-dog chefs, stat keepers, scoreboard operators, ball boys, first-down marker jockeys and service staff to put on a production like this.

John Castleberry, the Destroyers VP of sales and marketing, estimates as many as 180 people, most moonlighters and hourly workers, had a hand in an around the Sportsplex on championship-game night Oct. 21.

Some were paid by the team, some by Thornton, some team interns worked for free. All figure to have a sudden, new-found interest in off-season news regarding the UFL, whose directors say the league's survival depends on expansion into at least three new markets for next season.

"If the UFL goes away tomorrow, that's not going to cripple our facility," Thornton said. "We didn't know about the UFL when we took over. Our business model was to do it with multiple sports, and we've done a pretty good job of that."

But only one at the Sportsplex makes registers ring, and generates waves in the pool of the local economy, like Destroyers football.

Tom Robinson, 757-446-2518 or tom.robinson@pilotonline.com

Hamptonroads.com/robinson; Twitter @RobinsonVP