Art pays off big: NYC profits millions from "Gates"

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MK
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Art pays off big: NYC profits millions from "Gates"

Postby MK » Thu Mar 03, 2005 7:08 pm

Love 'em, dismiss 'em as shower curtains, it paid big-time

'The Gates' a Boom for New York Economy

1 hour, 42 minutes ago
U.S. National - AP

By VERENA DOBNIK, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK - "The Gates" was "a daring labor of love," Mayor Michael Bloomberg says and the 7,503 pieces of saffron fabric being dismantled this week leave a financial imprint: $254 million spent by visitors to the Central Park installation.

"It was like Christmas out there," said Paul Harvey, an Irish-born carriage driver located just outside the park. "Two weeks of Christmas."

Bloomberg boasted Thursday during a news conference at Mickey Mantle's restaurant on Central Park South that the intent of the event was to provide "a big, bold project that would set our city apart. We showed the world that New York is safe and exciting."

The installation featured a series of door frames or "gates," hung with fabric, spaced along 23 miles of Central Park's footpaths. It drew an estimated 4 million visitors to the park, including 1.5 million out-of-towners, between Feb. 12-27. The same period in a typical February usually sees 750,000 visitors.

There were 300,000 international guests, representing a 20 percent increase in the number of foreigners usually visiting Central Park in February, officials said. In midtown, hotel occupancy was 87 percent compared to 73 percent last February.

The artists — Bulgarian-born Christo and his Moroccan-born wife, Jeanne-Claude — picked up the entire tab for the construction and dismantling of the exhibition, financing the project with sales of their drawings and other works.

The $254 million in economic activity includes spending for hotels, restaurants and concessions and cultural institutions, as well as use of subways, buses and taxis, plus shopping and general entertainment. It does not include revenue from visitors who were here on business and would have spent money anyway.

Much of the extra cash went "into the pockets of hardworking New Yorkers," Bloomberg said.

Central Park Carriages, for example, had a 200 percent increase in the number of its horse-drawn carriage tours. Mickey Mantle's served 1,000 customers on weekend days, a figure more in line with the holiday season than the doldrums of February. For some, dinner was followed by a show on Broadway, where ticket sales went up 17 percent during "The Gates."

The park's pushcarts reported a 200 percent increase in sales. Vendor Pradit Das said he was peddling as many as 500 hot dogs and just about as many pretzels each day from his spot near the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Normally, he doesn't even roll out his cart in February.

The Met, meanwhile, offered merchandise with a "Gates" theme, from T-shirts to books to caps that pulled in $4 million. Profits went to Nurture New York's Nature Inc., a nonprofit group supporting the arts and environment, including the city's parks.

"The Gates" even benefited New York cultural institutions as far away as Queens, where the PS 1 Contemporary Art Center reported a 100 percent increase in attendance.

Bloomberg noted that many of the gates will continue to stand in the park through the weekend, giving visitors another chance to experience them.

Teams hired by the artists began taking down the gates this week. The thousands of tons of steel, orange plastic and saffron-colored nylon fabric are to be recycled as everything from paint rollers and steel reinforcing bars to PVC pipes.

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krabapple
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Postby krabapple » Fri Mar 04, 2005 11:59 am

when did 'boon' become 'boom'?
"I recommend that you delete the Rancid Snakepit" - Grant