It may not look like it yet, but in just a few days, this space here will be at the center of the biggest sporting event in the country.

After traveling to cities across the country, the NFL Draft is coming to Pittsburgh, and it's expected to bring hundreds of thousands of visitors with it.

It's an age long tradition for the NFL to go out and recruit new players amongst all of the 32 clubs.

This has turned into a big, spectacular show that the NFL puts on in various destinations across the country, but it's really an exciting opportunity for these players to really start their career, in this case right here in Pittsburgh.

But over the years, it's become much more than that, turning it into a multi-day event that brings fans, media and entire cities into the spotlight.

The whole experience is meant to be family friendly.

There is no cost to attend the Draft, so everyone that comes to the Draft simply has to go through a security checkpoint, and then they go into both experiences on the North Shore as well as Point State Park.

We're expecting to have somewhere between 500 to 700,000 visitors who will come to the Draft site over those three days.

For locals, those seem intimidating numbers, but when you think about even the most recent Saint Patrick's Day parade, where we had somewhere between 2 and 300,000 people in the Downtown area for the parade, this is like a Saint Patrick's Day parade three days in a row.

Those numbers are based on our research from the last three markets.

The economic benefit from the last three markets also indicates to us that we can experience somewhere between 100 and 20, up to $200 million of direct new spend here in the local market, specifically because the Draft is being hosted.

From its football legacy to its identity as a comeback city.

Pittsburgh fits right into that story.

When you think about Pittsburgh's evolution over the last hundred years, it is very much intertwined with the legacy and the advancements of the Steelers organization, but really football in general.

A lot of times, based on our research, people don't have an impression one way or another of Pittsburgh.

It's a very neutral outlook of the city.

So when they come here, they're really impressed about how modern the city is, the topography that we have here, the hills, how green it is.

Of course, the three rivers, all of that really influences their perception of Pittsburgh when they leave.

And typically it is an overwhelmingly positive impression that they have leaving the destination.

Even before the Draft begins, you're already seeing how it's changing the city.

And for visitors and locals, there is so much more to experience than just what's happening on stage.

If you're coming in as a football fan, you're going to see a lot of opportunities to have experiences both on the field of Acrisure, but also over at Point State Park, including all kinds of activities for kids, including flag football, running competitions, throwing competitions, being able to get autographs from some of the legends of football in different parts of the Draft site itself.

The Pittsburgh Steelers will have a pavilion over at Penn State Park, which is a really great way to celebrate everything Steelers.

There's a plethora of local concessionaires, so you'll be able to taste and experience a lot of our local food and beverage opportunities.

So it's a really exciting time to not only celebrate football, but to celebrate Pittsburgh in general.

If you're heading Downtown, getting there might be the biggest thing to plan ahead for.

Well, certainly no transportation is is going to be something that everybody is going to have on their mind when they're coming to the Downtown area for the Draft.

We've got a great partnership with PRT, who has expanded their services throughout the three days.

They've added four new park and ride services, one from the north, south, east and west.

Those services are also complimentary so fans can get onto those those rapid transit options and get into the Downtown area for free, as well as very conveniently.

Those busses will be letting out very close to the Draft site, the gate, the entrance gates on the North Shore.

So it's a really easy way for people to get Downtown and do it affordably.

Light rail is another great opportunity for people come from the South Hills.

Sheetz has also come on board and is sponsoring those routes.

So that's also free of charge for for travelers here in the local region to get onto those services.

In the meantime, the city is still getting ready from construction to cleanup, all leading up to the main event.

The re-invention of Market Square, the relaunch of Arts Landing, the Allegheny Overlook, the millions of dollars that the state has put into Point State Park.

All of those are investments in our community.

They're being done, of course, ahead of the Draft, but those are also benefits that we're going to have as Pittsburghers, as residents far beyond the Draft.

When the Draft arrives, this won't just be a stage for football.

It'll be a stage for Pittsburgh and a moment for the city to put itself on display.

There's a lot of ways that success is going to be defined coming out of the Draft.

We've talked a little bit about the economic benefit, and that is certainly important.

The brand benefit telling the Pittsburgh story is also absolutely critical.

That civic benefit, all of the programs that are associated with the Draft coming out of this, whether it's environmental or some of our programs to offset food insecurity here locally.

Those are all important metrics for us to measure for success, but also as the coming out of this is the long term business development aspects of Pittsburgh.

We will have quite a few event organizers who are also in the in Pittsburgh looking at Pittsburgh on this scale.

They might be convention organizers or sports event organizers who have other events that we're trying to bring to the market.

This gives us a great opportunity to tell the Pittsburgh story to them and really show what Pittsburgh can do.

This is also an opportunity for us to launch our new marketing campaign, which is the Forge On campaign, to help ride the wave of attention that the city's getting That will continue on for the next 18 months to try to keep that momentum going on the PR front.

So there's a lot of different ways that we're measuring success coming out of this, and it's really a collection of all of those aspects.