A summer of sizzling excitement in downtown San Jose

This summer in downtown San Jose promises to be one unlike any other. We have an unprecedented number of major events scheduled for downtown.

Book-ending the summer are two major sporting events, the San Jose Grand Prix on July 28-30 and NBC’s Dew Action Sports Tours scheduled for Sept. 7-11 at HP Pavilion. The grand prix will be followed by two unique non-sporting events that add to the mixture of extraordinary downtown activities that you can experience. The first is ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge. This seven-day event starts Aug. 7 and will feature the world’s most innovative artists creating art through the use of technology. From August 17-20 is the 17th Annual Comcast San Jose Jazz Festival, now one of the top jazz festivals in the country. For a full listing of downtown summer events go to (http://sanjose.org.

Look for Bob Knight and the Texas Tech basketball team in San Jose on Sunday, Dec. 3 as the Pete Newell Challenge basketball tournament will be held at HP Pavilion this year. Also competing are Stanford, Cal and Nevada-Reno.

Dean Munro
Executive Director

Four sports heroes whose careers are connected to San Jose have been selected as the 2006 Class of Inductees to the San Jose Sports Hall of Fame.

Stanford and professional basketball star Jennifer Azzi, five-time Super Bowl assistant coach Bill McPherson, multi-sport coach Walt McPherson of San Jose State, and Olympic swimming record-holder Mark Spitz will be inducted at November’s induction dinner presented by Hewlett-Packard.

Dinner tickets begin at $200 each and may be reserved by calling (408) 288-2936. Sponsorship packages range from $2,500 to $15,000.

The annual dinner is an event of the San Jose Sports Authority, San Jose Arena Authority, HP Pavilion Management/San Jose Sharks and the City of San José. The event benefits Special Olympics Silicon Valley Region and high school sports programs.

The second annual U.S. Olympic Assembly, hosted by the U.S. Olympic Committee, drew more than 350 Olympic Family members to La Jolla from June 21-25 including Dean Munro, executive director of the Sports Authority, and Patricia Ernstrom, deputy director.

Much of their time was spent networking with officials of the national governing bodies of various Olympic sports, such as USA Gymnastics, which will stage its Visa Championships in San Jose next spring. Also on their agenda was a report on the USOC’s consideration of a bid effort for the 2016 Olympic Games. San Francisco was one of five cities asked to make a bid presentation.

The nationally televised Dew Action Sports Tour began its second season last month with the Panasonic Open in Louisville, Ky., and is enroute to San Jose’s HP Pavilion for the Toyota Challenge on Sept. 7-10.

The San Jose stop is the fourth of the tour’s five-event season, which features professional competition in the adventure sports of skateboarding, FMX and BMX. BMX, which will also be part of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, has designated the San Jose tour spot as a Supercross World Cup competition.

The NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament will return to San Jose’s HP Pavilion in 2010 with four first-round and two second-round games. It will be the second time in four years that the tournament will be here following next spring’s NCAA San Jose Regional.

San Jose State University will host the games, which will bring eight teams to the city, March 18 and 20, 2010. The other first- and second-round hosts in 2010 will be Buffalo, N.Y., Providence, R.I., Jacksonville, Fla., New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Milwaukee and and Boise, Idaho. The four regional sites will be Syracuse, N.Y., St. Louis, Salt Lake City and Houston. Indianapolis will be the scene of the Final Four.

San Jose has become a regular part of the NCAA’s basketball tournament rotation hosting the Division I Men’s Basketball West Regional in 1997 and 2002 and the 1999 Women’s Final Four.

Six days a week, 16 hours a day. That’s been the work pace since last November when Stanford Stadium, the bowl-shaped 85,500-seat edifice that had hosted football and other sports since 1921, was demolished and the new Stanford Stadium, a rectangular, double-decked 50,000-seat stadium began to take shape.

More than 30,000 of those seats have been sold for the 2006 Opening Season, which begins Sept. 16 against Navy. Athletic Director Bill Walsh has predicted a season sellout for all five home games at the stadium. Visit the Stanford Stadium website to get details on the entire project, see weekly video construction updates, purchase tickets or even check out the view from the seats you’d like to buy at the South Bay’s newest sports venue.

Nail down the courtside chairs. Texas Tech, coached by Bobby Knight, and Nevada, formerly coached by Stanford’s Trent Johnson, come to HP Pavilion on Dec. 3 to face Stanford and Cal, respectively, in the 10th anniversary Pete Newell Challenge.

Knight likely will be within single digits of retired North Carolina Coach Dean Smith’s record as college basketball’s winningest coach when the Red Raiders meet Stanford. Nevada will bring 6-11 Nick Fazekas, a preseason All-America and Wooden Award candidate to face Cal.

Tickets for this college basketball doubleheader, kicking off an HP Pavilion season including the Pac-10 Women’s Basketball Tournament and the NCAA San Jose Regional in March, will be available at the arena’s boxoffice in October and through all Ticketmaster outlets. The event honors Newell, the 90-year-old coach who won an NIT title at USF, an NCAA championship at Cal and an Olympic gold medal in the 1960 Rome Games.

Board member Paul Krutko is director of the Office of Economic Development of the City of San José. During his tenure the city has completed projects to retain and expand projects for headquarters facilities for eBay and BEA Systems totaling 4.9 million square feet and gained City Council approval of a policy that will result in 29 million square feet of office/research facility development and 32,000 housing units for the San Jose's technology center.

Paul earned a Bachelor of Urban Planning and Design from the University of Cincinnati and came to San Jose from the Jacksonville (Fla.) Downtown Development Authority where he was executive director. He began his career in Louisville, Ky., as a staff planner with a private firm and has held planning positions with the Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Regional Planning Commission; City of Parma, Ohio; and City of Cleveland.