Thursday, March 03, 2005
Art as Commerce
The numbers are in and it's confirmed: The Gates was a tremendous moneymaker for New York City.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg reported today that more than 4 million visited the Central Park art installation over a two-week period in February (versus 750,000 last year), yielding approximately $254 million dollars to the local economy. Let's all pause here for a second and soak this in. Let's spell it out: 2-4-5 m-i-l-l-i-o-n s-m-a-c-k-a-r-o-o-s. Seriously, I knew that The Gates was popular and was going to be an overall economic good for the City, but seriously.
Hotel occupancy during the three weekends rose to 90% and rates were up 15% over last year. Naturally, area restaurants too reported increased business, some claiming increases of 110% over last February.
Love them or hate them for their self-promoting ways, Christo and Jeanne-Claude scored big with this one. Some saw beauty some not. Some saw a welcome addition to the landscape some just saw thousands of construction orange obstructions. But in the end, no real harm was done and more than 3 million people were introduced to the wonders of Central Park in winter. So, in the wake of The Gates, I think we all owe a big thank you to Christo and Jeanne-Claude.
D. Robert -- New York, NY
Mayor Michael Bloomberg reported today that more than 4 million visited the Central Park art installation over a two-week period in February (versus 750,000 last year), yielding approximately $254 million dollars to the local economy. Let's all pause here for a second and soak this in. Let's spell it out: 2-4-5 m-i-l-l-i-o-n s-m-a-c-k-a-r-o-o-s. Seriously, I knew that The Gates was popular and was going to be an overall economic good for the City, but seriously.
Hotel occupancy during the three weekends rose to 90% and rates were up 15% over last year. Naturally, area restaurants too reported increased business, some claiming increases of 110% over last February.
Love them or hate them for their self-promoting ways, Christo and Jeanne-Claude scored big with this one. Some saw beauty some not. Some saw a welcome addition to the landscape some just saw thousands of construction orange obstructions. But in the end, no real harm was done and more than 3 million people were introduced to the wonders of Central Park in winter. So, in the wake of The Gates, I think we all owe a big thank you to Christo and Jeanne-Claude.
D. Robert -- New York, NY
