The cultural tourist should not conjure lobster bibs and horsey talk. Rather, after the concert tickets have been bought, the cultural tourist will spend $38.05 on other items. The person in town for a non-arts event will spend an additional $21.75, a difference of $16.30.
Peekskill attracted some 60,000 such tourists last year via its Paramount Center for the Arts. Appropriate to the Depression-era cinema on Brown Street: More than pennies ”“ in fact, millions ”“ are falling from heaven.
Deb Milone, executive director of the 374-business Gateway Chamber of Commerce, ticked off nine restaurants on her fingers, all in the vicinity of “the Paramount.” She gave up and turned to her computer. The final tally was 19: “Caribbean to Ecuadorian to American and everything in between,” she said.
She was driving home a point. The Paramount, she said, “is a linchpin. It is one of our big attractions.”
And it”™s catching on thanks to a deal featuring city ownership and rent of $1 per year for the nonprofit that runs it. In 2007 theater membership donations totaled $20,000; three recession-riddled years later the total is above $50,000. “I think the response from the business community and the increased membership support are indications people will support this type of an enterprise,” said the theater”™s general manager, Seth Soloway.
Similar efforts are under way in Ridgefield, Conn., with the Ridgefield Playhouse and in Tarrytown with the Music Hall. There is an inevitable tug-of-talent between them, but not open competition, according to Soloway. “It”™s not a cooperative effort; there is going to be some competition for acts. That”™s natural.”
Attracting from across the tristate
The Paramount stage has featured Al Jarreau, Bernadette Peters, Davey Jones, George Benson, Joan Baez, Wynton Marsalis, The Temptations, Greg Allman, Jose Feliciano and the Smothers Brothers. Both George Carlin, who died in 2008, and Al Martino, who died in 2009, knew the Paramount limelight.
When America ”“ a bona fide super-group ”“ takes the stage March 17, tickets will be $45 and $55. The all-female, a capella Sweet Honey in the Rock concert on March 27 adjusts to $35 and $45. “We try to keep it affordable,” Soloway said. “We have to respond to the way people buy tickets today and how they choose their shows. Ticket subscribers are graying out ”“ that”™s not how people buy tickets anymore. They tend to pick and choose, using the Internet.”
However patrons arrive, Soloway has a single thing in mind: “To build their trust with a quality experience so they want to come back. Then, when they are looking for a show and they come across three they”™d like to see, they do so with the knowledge that every show the Paramount does is something of quality.”
In February, blues guitar legend Robert Cray attracted an audience from across the tristate region, even farther afield than the normal show”™s radius of 50 miles to 60 miles, according to Soloway.
The future could hold performing arts like dance and plays, a direction Soloway, whose background includes five years as programming director of the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts, would like to investigate.
The Peekskill Coffee House directly across the street from the theater stays open till 11 p.m. weekends (and 8 p.m. or 9 p.m. most nights) to catch show crowds. “Whenever there”™s a show, we”™re super-busy,” said shift manager Marybeth Heady recently. “It”™s great.”
Tallying the economic impact
The Paramount opened June 27, 1930, as a movie palace, accent on the palace. The Paramount Movie Studio, which operated theaters nationally under its Publix corporate banner, sold the building in the ”™50s, after which it entered a sine curve of depreciation and occasional resurrection. The roof still leaks a bit when it pours ”“ the “Whose Line Is It Anyway” cast incorporated the drips into their show recently ”“ but the building is otherwise a gold-leaf masterpiece, right down to the remade bathrooms. In 2004, in concert with the city of Peekskill, a $2 million restoration began. The city now rents the building to the theater”™s registered nonprofit corporation for $1 per year, with, as acting Executive Director Pat Braja sees it, the understanding this is good for the city.
“When we host an event, 30 percent or less of those who come are from the immediate area,” Braja said. “Many come from outside the area and many of those are coming for the first time.”
That matters to local businesses. The Americans for the Arts national database places out-of-town spending at $38.05 per attendee for concerts, while the in-town audience member spends $21.75. With 60,000 attendees last year, that figure translates to $2.28 million in Peekskill”™s cash registers that would be absent without the Paramount.
Braja said a number of businesses have embraced the theater, including Entergy, Wheelabrator, Bertolini & Sons and Hudson City Savings Bank. Putnam-based Franzoso Contracting sponsors the new film series title “On Screen @ PCA.”
Benjamin Krevolin, executive director of the Dutchess County Arts Council and a frequent source for art-economy information, said, “The audience that is going to the Paramount in Peekskill will tend also to have dinner and perhaps go out for a drink. If you compare that to the audience that attends, for example, a sporting event: There will be some spillover with the sports attendee, but usually all the food and drink money stays within the sports venue. People going to concerts at the Paramount will spend more than the average tourist.”
Not only did the Paramount attract a portly 28,000 attendees last year, lets remember the first (and now annual) Festa Italiana Peekskill – situated on Brown Street home of the Paramount Theatre, attracted over 15,000 attendees over just 3 days last year. Seems Theatre, or at least the Paramount, needs a lesson in promotion.
In their annual report to the City of Peekskill the Paramount Theatre reported ticket sales for full year 2010 at 28,000, not 60,000. Who is fooling who?