On Jan. 26, The Locker Room Visitor Center and Sports Merchandise store opened in San José in time for a number of local and national sporting events planned to take place in the Bay Area over the next several months.
The new visitor center is located at 93 E. San Carlos Street and is about one block Southwest of San José State.
John Poch, the executive director for San José Sports Authority, an SJSU alumni and class of 2020 Hall of Fame inductee, said he saw a need for a visitor center in San José and has been working with the city since 2023 to try and make it happen.
“This isn’t a visitor center for downtown. It’s a visitor center for all of San José,” Poch said. “We actively promote all 10 districts of San José and so our goal is for people to fly to San José and stay in San José.”
The Locker Room has multiple maps, qr codes and pamphlets for people who may be traveling from out of town, according to their website.
Poch said he wanted county residents to feel a part of the Super Bowl experience and other upcoming sporting events in San José.
“What can we do around the Super Bowl that makes our residents and our visitors feel a part of the Super Bowl experience, because maybe 1% can get a ticket to go to a Super Bowl,” Poch said. “What about the other 99% so how do we create a Super Bowl experience?”
The Locker Room is set up to help bring people together through big events that are happening in San José and distribute information to visitors, according to their website.
Visitors of The Locker Room have access to multiple other amenities such as a podcast room, where users can record both audio and visual for their podcast and an executive boardroom for non-profits to use for meetings and a community commons area for presentations, speeches and more according to their website.
Nora Rosenthal, a second-year psychology student at SJSU, said that having merchandise from multiple different teams would help a customer save on shipping and that it was neat to have a community space with podcasting equipment and speaker areas.
“I think it gives people a chance to make their voices heard,” Rosenthal said.
The Locker Room features a gift shop that is stocked with merchandise from the San José Giants, San José Sharks, San José Barracuda, San José Earthquakes, Bay Football Club and San José State.
Trevor Shore, an SJ26 analyst and manager of the center, said that San José has lacked a community space for San José residents and visitors to visit.
“I’ve had many people who live in downtown San José come here and say, this is so cool. Why wasn’t this here earlier,” Shore said. “To provide that for people of the city of San José, is really special.”
The Locker Room is open weekdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. throughout February and will convert to being open seven days a week in March, according to their website.
