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View Winners → Rose Bowl tours now offered to public
Arcadia Weekly Jul 03, 2013
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The historic Rose Bowl – site of many a New Year’s Day football game – is opening its concrete gates for the public to see what really goes on inside the classic stadium.
Tours of the Rose Bowl are now going on with just a visit to the stadium’s website.
Rose Bowl General Manager Darryl Dunn said by taking the tour you’ll see things there you didn’t know existed.
“This is an opportunity to open the Rose Bowl’s doors to the public so you can come in and experience some things you haven’t seen before,” Dunn said. “Whether it’s going to a locker room or seeing the place where Knute Rockne inspired his players, it’s a really a-kin to a museum.”
As the stadium is a National Historic Landmark – Yale, Harvard and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum are the other three – Dunn said it only helps to add to the interest in the Rose Bowl.
“There are four in the country and we’re one of them,” Dunn said. “It’s an icon, it truly It it helps identify Pasadena It helps to put us on a platform to the world It helps overall the commerce and people wanting to come here. It’s a heck of a commercial”
While the Rose Bowl is best known for college football – especially on New Year’s Day – other events there are the July 4 fireworks show, professional soccer and concerts, Dunn said.
“There are activities going on all year,” Dunn said. “We do a lot of corporate events a lot of filming I think the renovations going on will make the Rose Bowl look a little bit younger so it can be continued to be utilized.”
The Rose Bowl’s renovation started in January 2011. Costing $181 million, the renovation mainly included the press box and some other buildings.
And as a landmark, changes at the stadium cannot be done without a lot of preplanning and many people to approve it.
“The fact that you have something that old and original, you need to clean it up a bit, but you don’t want to tear it down,” Dunn said. “You want to appreciate the history here and who you are. We’re never going to be a billion dollar brand new stadium. That’s not what the Rose Bowl is.”
To plan a tour of the Rose Bowl, log onto www.rosebowlstadium.com.
(Shel Segal can be reached at ssegal@beaconmedianews.com).
