Catered events feed library coffers

TALK OF THE TOWN: Guests at an April library benefit dance in the renovated Garden Courtyard. / COURTESY AL WEEMS
TALK OF THE TOWN: Guests at an April library benefit dance in the renovated Garden Courtyard. / COURTESY AL WEEMS

In June, Trinity Repertory Company hosted its 17th annual Pell Awards in a new spot – one where guests could enjoy a Mojito-flavored cupcake or a lamb martini at meal stations anytime they wanted after the playhouse ceremony.
The Providence Public Library was the venue David Azulay, the theater company’s manager of VIP services and special events, chose for the fundraiser, which drew 350 people and raised $170,000 for Trinity Rep. Azulay said he liked “the flow” of food service from room to room.
The recently restored public library since February has been using any of its six different spaces after-hours for events managed, and when requested catered, by Russell Morin Fine Catering, of Attleboro. The partnership is an effort to extend the building to the community and create a new revenue stream to help fund its operating budget, said Tonia Mason, the library’s marketing and communications director.
At the black-tie, June affair, Trinity guests wandered from a raw bar and elaborate cheese station in the library’s Ship Room, where a butler passed hors d’oeuvres, to the playhouse for the ceremony, and then back to the Garden Courtyard and Grand Hall for that lamb martini (whipped potato with a lamb chop in it), liquor-infused cupcakes, and other tasty treats. “I wanted our guests to have access to everything at all times,” Azulay said.
In 1875, the library was chartered and located in Kennedy Plaza, but moved to Snow Street before ground was broken for the building at the corner of Washington and Empire streets in 1896. The classic Venetian Renaissance style structure with Beaux arts detail opened in 1900 and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
A $4 million restoration, being paid for with private funds and ongoing fundraising, not only restored some of these grand rooms with their high ceilings, ornate columns, and mahogany veneer tables and cabinetry, but also went toward functional library necessities like heating and ventilation, fire safety and information technology upgrades, Mason added. The rooms that are available for catered parties and weddings as well as noncatered meetings and events include the Ship Room, Grand Hall, Garden Courtyard, the Providence Journal Rhode Island Room, a meeting room also known as the Barnard Room and a trustee room.
The Rhode Island Room has made accessible the library’s special collections, particularly the Rhode Island Collection, which features The Providence Journal’s newspapers on microfilm dating back to the mid-1800s.
This year through June, catered events have raised about $150,000 for the library, Mason said.
Prices can range anywhere from $20 a head for a casual buffet to $175 a head at a high-end wedding like one scheduled in November for a young bride and a groom connected to the Egyptian government, Morin said.
What’s more, a total of 65 events have been booked for 2013, with 41 scheduled through 2015, Mason said. Most are weddings, but special events, corporate meetings, and galas are also planned, she said.
Of the 52 Saturdays available in 2014, only 13 are not yet booked, added the caterer.
For playing host, the library receives 8 percent of the profits from food and alcohol sales, plus most of the money for the rental of library spaces, (weddings average around $4,500), and 100 percent of the money paid to rent tables and chairs, Russell Morin and Mason said.
“We were looking for that revenue stream,” Mason said. The goal, she added, is “share this distinctive asset in a way that will allow the library to continue with its mission.”
Morin, who has exclusive contracts with other venues, including Belcourt Castle in Newport and the Whaling Museum in New Bedford, projects the library will raise between $300,000 and $400,000 in 2014.
“It’s all a little bit of guesswork,” Mason said of revenue earnings and booking projections. “It’s a new venture. It’s been done in other markets, but the early interest has been great. It’s a matter of feeling our way.” The board of trustees for operations modeled its new venture on similar partnerships that Boston, New York and other major cities have developed for their public libraries.
Those cities use a combination of beautifully appointed, historic spaces, rooms that showcase unique local collections, and a well-known caterer to attract event planners from both the corporate and nonprofit world, said Elizabeth Debs, trustee, secretary and chairperson for the board’s facilities committee.
Debs said she and other trustees explored what those and similar large cities across the country had in place before bidding for a company that could manage everything from catering to booking and cleaning. Morin’s group was hired in February 2012, while renovations were still underway, Mason said.
“There’s a big movement in the nonprofit world to develop streams of operating income from nontraditional sources and to create affiliations and partnerships,” Debs said. “It’s a trend – a successful trend, because a lot of the older libraries have historic assets in their buildings [that] are also quite a challenge to maintain.”
So far, the partnership with Morin’s firm has accomplished what trustees were seeking, Mason said:
“We wanted to make sure the caterer shared our values in terms of community: not to make this an exclusive venue but to be open to everybody and use these spaces in different ways.”
Following Providence’s decision in 2009 to use $3 million to run the library branches, Mason said, the library had to refocus, using private funding and fundraising to cover renovation costs.
While the money raised from hosted events is targeted to support operations, the ultimate success of restoration fundraising will determine whether the money raised from events could also help cover those costs, Mason said. •

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