As all of Bermuda now knows, the next America’s Cup will be held here during the early summer of 2017. But the implications of that decision are being felt already.

My name is Peter Rusch and I work in communications for the America’s Cup. I’ve been involved in the past five editions of the Cup, dating back to 1999.

In that time, the event has taken me to Auckland, New Zealand (1999, 2003); Valencia, Spain (2007, 2010); and San Francisco (2013). In each case the America’s Cup was the impetus, to a greater or lesser degree, for major projects in the host venue.

In Auckland, the Viaduct Basin was created from a little-used area of the port. Today it remains the prime waterfront destination in New Zealand’s biggest city and an entire marine industry that grew up around the America’s Cup continues to flourish.

In Valencia, a rundown area of the port was transformed into Port America’s Cup, and has subsequently been the venue for F1 events and other sailing regattas. As the America’s Cup moved on from Spain, the Volvo Ocean Race moved in just down the coast, where its headquarters remain to this day.

In San Francisco, a project that had been stalled for the better part of a generation was finally moved off the drawing board and completed in time to become the backbone of the America’s Cup Park in 2013. We were privileged to be the first tenant, before handing the building and the site over for the use that was envisaged — a state-of-the-art cruise ship terminal.

Today, it is Bermuda, with plans to expand and transform the Royal Naval Dockyard. Having visited Dockyard for the first time this month, I have no doubt it will be a fantastic site for the America’s Cup. The opportunity to have all of the teams, along with the America’s Cup Village, in one location with views of the entire racecourse is very exciting.

But to get to that point is going to take a lot of work and we are going to need a lot of help from all aspects of the community in Bermuda.

We are already working closely with the ACBDA, which organised Bermuda’s successful bid, which is now supporting us at the America’s Cup Event Authority (ACEA) and each of the teams as we take our first steps on the Island.

At the ACEA we plan to open our office in Bermuda in March next year. About a dozen of us will be moving here with our families in the first half of the year.

We will be looking to locally hire about that many again, and that is just to get started.

Oracle Team USA, the defending champion of the America’s Cup, will also be relocating their business, staff and families to Bermuda next year. By May, you should expect to see them operating from their team base set up at the Royal Naval Dockyard and sailing their new foiling wingsailed AC45 catamaran in tests on the Great Sound.

Before we break for the Christmas holidays, we will be setting up contact pages on www.americascup.com, where Bermudians can browse job listings, register interest in the volunteer positions so critical to the running of our events, or register their companies with our AC Business Connect programme, which will become a focal point for business and contracting opportunities.

While it is early days, all of these programmes will come on stream in the first quarter of next year and provide opportunities for all Bermudians to get involved and enjoy what is sure to be a tremendous three years as we build together towards the America’s Cup World Series event in October 2015 and, of course, the America’s Cup in 2017.

You will be hearing from my colleagues and me again. We will make this column a regular feature in the new year. We would love to hear from you, too, at Facebook.com/americascup and twitter.com/americascup. Happy holidays and we’ll see you in the new year.