The Connecticut Film Festival has found a home after shopping around Fairfield County for the past year or so for a headquarters city from which to operate the statewide festival. Earlier this month the Danbury Common Council voted 20-1 to give the festival $75,000 to promote its main event this May in downtown Danbury, along with getting a guarantee from the festival”™s organizer, Tom Carruthers, to keep the festival in the city should it prove successful.
Carruthers has no doubt of the festival”™s long-term success in Danbury and around the state, and of the economic impact the festival will have on the city. “”˜Opportunity”™ is written all over it during the course of the next 10 years,” he said. “I”™ll get it off the ground, but I want this thing to be around here long after I”™m gone.”
What he sees long term is quite sweeping in scope and includes carving out an economic niche for Danbury as a center for film production and post-production; a renewed downtown with shops, restaurants, businesses and professionals to serve the film center; and public schools, the technical school and Western Connecticut State University all creating courses and studies “to raise industry people from the ground up, so that right out of high school and college they”™d be able to assimilate into the industry,” he said.
The result could be creation of an arts and cultural center in the city of which the film festival will be only one part. Anchoring all that would be the 80-year-old, 2,000-seat Palace Theater on Main Street, in the initial stages of restoration. “This could be the beginning of an infrastructure for a renaissance of arts and music and a new industry that dovetails with the state”™s new Hollywood East film industry in Connecticut,” Carruthers said.
Conservative numbers
In the short term, Carruthers thinks the 3-year-old festival will draw at least 5,000 people to Danbury”™s downtown CityCenter during the six-day event in May, generating close to $1 million for the economy. “Those are pretty conservative numbers, based on the ticket sales we did the previous years, but they are good, solid numbers,” he said of the potential attendance. “With the current expansion model we have in mind over the course of three years, this could blow up into the next Danbury Fair.” The century-old fair drew thousands of visitors each October until it was sold to the developers of the Danbury Fair Mall some 20 years ago.
Jim Whitney, director of the Northwest Connecticut Convention and Visitors Bureau in Waterbury, did a preliminary economic impact analysis for the Danbury portion of the festival, suggesting that if 5,000 attendees spend the U.S. average of $106 per person ”“ “the U.S. average for people who attend these types of events” ”“ they would spend about $530,000 in direct spending for everything from a hamburger to gasoline to tickets, which will result in an “induced impact” of about $420,000 as that money moves through the economy, for a total of $959,300.
“The question is whether Danbury will be above or below the average, and we won”™t know that until we do a real-life study,” Whitney said. “We may be surprised. (Carruthers) may get his 5,000 people but they may spend 150 bucks.” In any event, “you can”™t even go to the movies for 50 bucks,” so even that spending level would have an impact of about $452,500 for the city, he said.
Whitney”™s higher estimates may prove fairly accurate. The Kent Film Festival about 30 miles north of Danbury in Litchfield County did a survey about the economic impact of the 1,500 people the festival drew last year. “The four-day event brought more than $270,000 into the area,” said Frank Galterio, festival founder and director. That”™s about $180 a person. “Everybody spends money on everything from ATM machines to gasoline to meals. Even the person who serves hamburgers makes money through tips. It goes on and on.”
Over in Rhode Island, the 12-year-old statewide Rhode Island Film Festival in Providence ”“ which drew 24,000 people last year ”“ hasn”™t done a formal economic survey, but “we can judge from the feedback from restaurants and hotels and merchants” about the festival”™s impact, said Adam Short, producing director of the festival. “Every year they want to do more with us because they see the difference.”
In fact, Short said, last year the festival started putting together travel packages offering discounts on hotel rooms, restaurants, festival ticket, car rentals and even Amtrak tickets. “The city of Providence was working with a public relations firm out of New York, pushing the festival in New York and Connecticut for regional travel,” he said.
Exciting opportunity
As for Danbury, if the film festival develops along with the state”™s fledgling film industry which is being spurred by generous tax credits, “and Danbury can be identified as a film industry area, we face a very exciting economic opportunity,” said Andrea Gartner, manager of CityCenter, Danbury”™s downtown special services district.
She foresees the possibility of the downtown retail mix changing to include coffee shops, bookstores, clothing stores and other retailers “centered around film, music and culture,” she said. “The additional component of the restored Palace Theater being opened will help create a dynamic downtown.”
The May festival in Danbury will offer screenings, special events, networking opportunities, receptions and workshops concentrated downtown, including events on the midtown WestConn campus. “We”™ve been talking back and forth with Tom about how many events we might have here and where they would be,” said Paul Steinmetz, director of university relations.
“It”™s a good way for WestConn to part of a good event, and a good way to connect our students with people in the film industry. We”™re very interested in that.” As the university builds its communication and film program, Steinmetz said, “the film festival could be a larger part of the university and our program.”
The film festival should also boost the economies of other communities around the state, including several in lower Fairfield County. The event began as the Bethel Film Festival in 2005 that attracted 3,000 people, spread to eight cities and towns around the state in 2006 that attracted 4,500 people, and began a nine-month run last September, with a series of weeknight and weekend screening events that are attracting about 500 people each weekend, Carruthers said. “We expected between 10,000 and 12,000 people the whole season,” including the screenings in Danbury. “I”™m really driven to make a difference in the community.”
