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Tale of the Tape
Longer International Fest = more people, more dollars
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Business New Haven
7/12/1999
By: Michele Beck
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Crowds of people congregate on Chapel Street, forming lines customarily seen only at Disney World. But these people are not waiting to visit Space Mountain or the hottest new roller-coaster - they are waiting in line to use the Fleet Bank ATM machine.
For Paul Collard, director of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, this is music to his ears.
"The festival has two purposes," he explains. "One is to stimulate the economic development of the city [New Haven], and the second is to build social cohesion. We want to celebrate the city's riches - the galleries, architectural structures and the museums," Collard says.
Collard said that it is important to convey the fact that New Haven doesn't "shut down" in May after Yale goes on summer break. There are shops, restaurants and museums waiting to be discovered.
"The public's perception is that they have to travel an hour and a half from the Green to see a show or visit a museum," Collard says. "We have to change people's behavior, not their attitudes, to positively economically impact New Haven."
The festival, which completed its fourth year on July 3, this year grew from five to 16 days. Also growing were the crowds the event attracted: 110,300 attendees in all - up 16 percent over a year ago. Box-office income from ticketed events nearly doubled from $140,000 in 1998 to $275,000 this year.
Total cost of the 16-day extravaganza ran about $2.4 million, which was covered by corporate and individual sponsors, the state of Connecticut, foundations and ticket sales.
In order to get a better idea of who comes to the festival and how much they spend in New Haven, Collard says the festival committee commissioned a survey in conjunction with the Quinnipiac College School of Business. The results will be available in August.
Collard notes that the festival itself generates business directly because performers stay in local hotels and eat in area restaurants. "Last year we logged about 1,000 hotel nights. We also provide jobs to a lot of people in the area," Collard explains.
Are festival attendees spending money in the small businesses and shops downtown?
The anecdotal evidence is mixed. Diarmuid Kennedy, manager of Atticus Bookstore Café at 1082 Chapel Street, says the festival "did have a good effect on business. Traffic through the store increased. More families came in. You can tell by the different types of books people bought - art books, kids books, high quality fiction."
Kennedy says his store was buzzing during the day, a time when the store would normally be slow when Yale is not in session. "The times that it is normally dead in here, it wasn't," Kennedy says.
Although the streets were crowded and people were withdrawing money from ATMs, Dieter VonRabenstein, manager of Richter's at 990 Chapel Street, says business was not affected by the festival.
"There were nights when Manhattan Transfer was playing at the Shubert and that Saturday when Roberta Flack was playing [on the Green]. More people did come in on those nights, but not enough for me to prepare any differently than I normally would," VonRabenstein says.
He adds that since many of the daytime events on the Green were aimed at children, it did little for business at Richter's. VonRabenstein also says that since many events were scattered throughout the city, from Long Wharf Theatre to the Shubert to the Yale Center for British Art, the festival was less centralized around the Green as he had anticipated.
"We're a bar and a restaurant, so it doesn't really affect us day to day," VonRabenstein says. "A couple hundred people come on their lunch breaks to the concerts on the Green, but they don't come in here."
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