CLEVELAND — The 2024 NCAA Women's Basketball Final Four marks the second time Cleveland's played host to the event. This week in 2007, more than 25,000 people made their way to Cleveland to see LSU, North Carolina, Rutgers and Tennessee battle it out for the national title.
The championship game, played then on a Tuesday, saw the Lady Vols of Tennessee, led by All-American Candace Parker, win legendary coach Pat Summitt the seventh of her eight national championships.
Current Iowa Head Coach Lisa Bluder remembers being one of the spectators in town for the game.
"This time I get to play a game," joked Bluder. "I think I was interviewing assistant coaches at that point. I did go to a really nice Italian restaurant when I was there and of course the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame."
For Cleveland, those games were years in the making, as the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission's David Gilbert told News 5 in 2007. "You know this is the biggest sporting event we've had, I think, since the World Series in '97, and this for us is really [a] once-in-a-decade kind of event."
It would turn out to be a 17-year gap, but that's OK, because for the better part of the next decade, Cleveland would be in "pardon our dust" mode.
After losing a bid to host the 2008 Republican National Convention, the city knew major changes were needed to land future events. It started with the building of a whole new convention center downtown. A space big and modern enough to accommodate gatherings like Tourney Town, the interactive Final Four event space that opens to the public Thursday which is much along the lines of the MLB's Playball Park at the 2019 baseball All-Star Game.
Cleveland added new hotels—remember, in 2007, what is now the Convention Center Hilton was still the old county administration building, and the Drury Hotel was still the CMSD Board of Education building. In addition, Public Square - the site of Sunday's massive Final Four Bounce parade, had yet to undergo its $50 million renovation and the arena itself back then resembled a concrete box before its $185 million transformation.
These changes captured the attention of the NCAA in 2018 when Cleveland was awarded these games. Just as Cleveland isn't the same as it was in 2007, neither is women's college basketball.
"I think what's wonderful is this game has grown and Cleveland's grown as a city and they've come together to really make sure we feel welcome," said Amy Reis, NCAA Director of Women's Basketball.
Gilbert, who is also President and CEO of Destination Cleveland, knows without the changes made over the last 17 years, events like the Women's Final Four would have outgrown what the city could offer.
"Downtown, there's so much more here for people to see and do," Gilbert said. "Great new hotels, the convention center, other terrific places to hold events." The latter part is often overlooked, he said.
"So many people and different organizations that want to host different events, private events, dozens of them and there's places to hold all of them. And that just adds to the excitement and adds to, quite frankly, the impact in our community," he said.
As Cleveland gets set to welcome fans from the Carolinas, Iowa and Connecticut, Gilbert said many of them will be seeing the city for the first time, and that is a major opportunity in 2024 that is so much more impactful than it would have been in 2007.
"So for us this 25,000 or so people that are coming in, probably a large portion have never been here and we know there minds are going to be changed about our city. They're going to be telling their friends, their networks about what a great city we are. So this is the kind of thing that has an amazing short term impact, tens of millions of dollars but also a long term impact in terms of drawing new people to our city to live, to work, to be ambassadors of Cleveland," he said.
