It’s a big week for San Jose, as it welcomes college basketball fans at the SAP Center for March Madness, which will start Thursday. SAP Center will host three games: two on Thursday and one on Saturday. This comes about a month and a half after the Super Bowl. The city said the Fan Fests Su per Bowl week were a success, so they are trying to build on that this week. The San Pedro Superfest is back for March Madness from Thursday to Saturday. Tommy O’Hare, the city’ sports and special events director, said they learned fans like interactive experiences. “The superfests were wildly successful, we had 48,000 unique visitors thru our superfest Friday, Saturday and Sunday of Super Bowl weekend,” O’Hare said. “We’ve doubled down on that quite a bit, you’ll see something called the Hoop Bus, it’s this bus that’ll be driven into San Pedro Square, it got all sorts of things in it, like basketball hoops and other things for kids to do around basketball.” Businesses are hoping to see more people come in, including some food spots that just opened this month. Jacob Carrera works at Hapa’s Brewing just down the street from SAP Center – they’re opening up earlier than normal Thursday at noon. The owners said there will be DJ’s both Thursday and Saturday, as well as food trucks ahead of the games. “Seeing new faces, interacting and just talking sports is pretty much what I like to do,” Carrera said. “Just hopefully a good spot for people to hang out and chill before the game.” They’re familiar with hosting more people during big sporting events. Last month, they had a block party Super Bowl week – it was one of several events that week in San Jose. On Friday at San Pedro Square, DJ Diesel (also known as Shaq) and Whetham will perform at a free pop-up party. Part of the goal this week is to bring exposure to businesses, including new ones that just opened up this month in San Pedro Square. “So people can experience them but also realize they like them and want to come back again and and again,” O’Hare said. “It’s only our third week, we have been thru a couple of parties here, every time there’s a party or event, it really helps the businesses around here,” Owner of Must be Thai kitchen bar Thalia Swangchaeng said. ...read more read less