Theater cos. draw for nearby businesses

Brickley’s Ice Cream owner Steve Groffi has had, for the last seven years, a front-row seat to a town’s cultural revitalization from his shop’s front door on Wakefield’s Main Street, in South Kingstown.
Restaurants began popping up and expanding, including PHIL’s Main Street Grille. Additional shops and service businesses, including a yoga studio, opened nearby.
Then, just this summer, The Contemporary Theater Co., a seven-year-old performance troupe, moved in right across the street and Groffi saw a 15 percent spike in business for the season.
“I can attribute a portion of that to [the theater]. They’re generating [traffic] … it has certainly been a good thing for downtown and we’ve really helped one another.”
According to the Rhode Island Cultural Data Program, nonprofit theater companies in the state generated over $13 million in revenue and had a combined attendance of 264,386 for paid and free admissions in 2010, the most recent numbers available.
Those figures include 10 theaters, but not The Contemporary Theater or Theatre By the Sea, formerly the Ocean State Theater Co., in South Kingstown.
The numbers do include the state’s perhaps best-known theater companies: Trinity Repertory Co. in Providence and The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre in Pawtucket.
“All you need to do is go downtown in Providence any night that Trinity Rep is active and functioning and you’re going to see. Restaurants are busy, parking lots are full, bars are going to be active,” said Randall Rosenbaum, executive director of the R.I. State Council on the Arts. “There’s a direct quid pro quo, from people attending to spending money that helps drive the Rhode Island economy.”
That flow of impact from theater ticket sales to restaurant bills and business at other area proprietors can be hard to measure, though the theory is simple.
If a couple or group of people have tickets to an evening show, which generally curtains somewhere around 7 or 8 p.m., they often will either go out for dinner beforehand or a drink or dessert afterward. Sometimes they’ll do both.
They also likely will park at least one car in a paid city garage or lot and could, at least in the case of Providence, take a stroll through nearby shop-filled streets. But theaters don’t always know where and when their patrons go before and after shows. And businesses don’t always know their customers have come from the theater.
“The indirect is a little harder,” Rosenbaum said. “People don’t understand the magnitude of dollars involved.”
The New England Foundation for the Arts’ 2011 study, “New England’s Creative Economy: Nonprofit Sector Impact,” for 2009 put the total economic impact of Rhode Island’s approximately 1,200 nonprofit arts and cultural organizations, including theaters, at $673 million.
The report showed that every $1 spent by a Rhode Island nonprofit organization generated $2.10 in sales for local businesses.
In some cases, this impact is crystal clear.
Bravo Brasserie, an American-French bistro across the street from Trinity Rep, has a birds-eye view of which customers are coming from the theater.
The Christmas season, when the theater stages a production of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” is the restaurant’s busiest, but the theater provides business year-round, said General Manager Fred Goodwin.
“We couldn’t replace the business they provide for us. In a nutshell, if Trinity Rep wasn’t across the street, we’d probably be out of business,” Goodwin said.
Marilyn Busch, director of marketing and public relations at Trinity Rep, said some 130,000 people come to the theater each year.
That includes an estimated 30,000 during the typically slow summer months since 2009, when the theater began running limited-engagement shows. This year, Busch said, 11,000 people attended three summer productions.
During its 2011-2012 season, The Gamm Theatre, where the new season opens in downtown Pawtucket this month, had 19,200 people attend its paid performances and broke its single-ticket sales record.
Acting Executive Director David Wax would love to be able to recommend an after-show spot to patrons.
“I live very near [the theater] and there’s nothing [else] around. We would love to have more,” he said. “The Gamm Theatre has carved out a niche as a stimulating theater. There are more and more people hearing about that. We certainly think restaurants and bars would benefit tremendously.”
Nearby – but not within walking distance – Cresta Bar & Ristorante, according to owner Brandon Harnois, sees about a 15 percent to 20 percent increase in business on Gamm show nights. “But that’s about it. It’s usually dinner and drinks,” Harnois said. “We don’t segregate [dinner specials] to Gamm [patrons] but it’s definitely something we’re considering for the future.”
Ricardo Pitts Wiley, development director and a founder of Mixed Magic Theatre, which has its home in the Hope Artiste Village in Pawtucket, would love to see more of that type of collaboration.
His building is home to a Seven Stars Bakery, The Met, a coffee shop and Rosinha’s Restaurant, all businesses, he said, that could benefit from theater traffic.
Mixed Magic was due to wrap up its current season mid-September, with attendance estimated at 3,500.
“I think the businesses and arts organizations need to be much more aware of how [to] turn the audience into an audience that participates in [a complete evening out],” Pitts Wiley said.
By the end of August, The Contemporary Theater Co. had welcomed 1,699 patrons through its doors. At least a fair portion, it seems, have also then walked through the doors of neighboring businesses.
“It’s very easy to see after shows. People walk out of the theater and you can track them with your eyes,” said Chris Simpson, the theater’s artistic director and founder. “People are coming down here for us and it’s providing another anchor that way for an influx of customers and diners.”
Economic impact cannot be judged solely on performance-driven side effects.
In 2010, theaters counted 85 full-time employees and 61.7 full-time equivalent employees on their payroll, according to the R.I. Cultural Data Program. They also spent some $12.3 million.
In its last fiscal year, which ended in December 2011, the Contemporary Theater Co. spent 70 percent of its $46,700 nonpayroll expenses in Rhode Island.
Trinity Rep put its annual operating expenses at $8.2 million and employment at 340 full-time equivalent positions.
Of course, there are also more than just monetary benefits.
“The theater companies in our state contribute significantly [also] to the quality of education and the quality of life that we enjoy,” Rosenbaum said. “All of that has an impact as well.” •

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