For cities that host First Night celebrations, New Year’s Eve has become a gift organizers say keeps right on giving.
According to a pre-millennium hype study two years ago to determine what effects First Night celebrations had on surrounding communities, there are “across-board-benefits” to business in terms of generating year-round excitement, said Dave Sullivan, associate director of First Night International.
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Take “Water-fire” for example, originally commissioned for First Night Providence’s 10-year anniversary in 1995. “You can see what happened with that,” Sullivan said, and while “not taking anything away from [artist] Barnaby Evans,” it’s easy to see how both the city and Evans have benefited ever since.
And while First Night International certainly can’t take credit for all of the “reanimation” that’s occurred in Providence these last several years, “it certainly helped,” Sullivan said.
“You don’t believe it’s the same city that it was 10 or 15 years ago,” agreed Zeren Earls, founding president of the international group and formerly director of Boston’s First Night for 14 years. “A First Night celebration is an important spoke of a wheel in advancing our cities.”
The First Night International Study, which included Providence, showed the average expenditure per First Night attendee was $68, including admission and did not include residual impact.
While Providence has not conducted its own study on the event’s economic impact since 1992, that eight-year-old study showed First Night added more than $1 million to the local economy, a figure First Night Providence organizers say has grown significantly since then, along with the economy and the vast changes to the city’s landscape.
“You’d be amazed” at the kinds of services that are utilized thanks to First Night, Sullivan said, from shops, bars and restaurants to taxicabs and parking garages, and because First Night begins during the daytime folks are inspired to visit restaurants early instead of waiting until evening.
The First Night International study also showed many people did “ancillary shopping” on New Year’s Eve, taking advantage of after-Christmas sales, and often stayed longer than one day, which means even more trips to restaurants and movies.
“There is a very good impact,” agreed Charlie Meyers, owner of Metropark Ltd. in Providence – although, he says, he doesn’t have enough employees this year to keep his lots open during this year’s First Night. “I’m going to be ‘First Nighting’ in Australia.”
But Intown Parking Inc. of Providence plans to have seven lots open New Year’s Eve, according to a spokesman, spread out among the downtown area of Weybosset, Dorrance, Westminster and Matthewson streets. “It’s historically a good night,” said the spokesman, and besides their proximity to downtown bars and restaurants, the after 2 p.m. parking ban on several streets imposed for First Night also helps.
Because First Night events typically are held in downtown urban centers, their mission besides providing an artistic night of fun is to attract folks to areas that might normally not be attractive, to increase the “quality of life and the safety aspect of coming into town,” Earls said.
“There is clearly an economic impact” during the evening itself, she said, but “that’s not the driving force” – the real mission of First Night, she said, is as “an investment in your city, that it’s a good place to come.”
Earls said Providence isn’t the only city whose downtown has experienced a renaissance since instituting First Night, and cited Monterey, Calif., Raleigh, N.C., Pittsburgh, Burlington, Vt. and Salt Lake City as examples.
Sullivan, who managed a downtown Boston hotel in 1976, remembers well the ghostly, desolate nature of city streets back then, with occupancy rates between 30 and 35 percent and a room inventory that was about “45 percent of what it is today.”
Today hotels in Boston are all booked New Year’s Eve, with “every hotel in Boston” offering some type of First Night package, he said.
Because “the economy has changed drastically” in the last month or so, Dale Venturini, president/chief executive officer of the Rhode Island Hospitality and Tourism Association, said her members are in a state of flux and booking numbers were not yet available.
But things have definitely quieted, she said, and while “it’s not drastic” there has definitely been a decrease since last year. “The millennium was the time to celebrate.”
First Night International encompasses more than 200 First Night celebrations, including 190 in the United States and 15 in Canada, New Zealand and England.
The First Night concept all began in Boston in 1976 as part of the Bicentennial, and for the first five years Boston was pretty much on its own, Earls said.
Then came Worcester, Mass and Charlottesville, Va., the first in an original “sprinkling of cities” that also included Burlington, Vt. and Providence, which started its First Night in 1985.
Once there were about 25 First Night cities the Boston group decided to detach and let management go to a larger-based board of directors, which eventually led to the creation of the international organization in 1991.
The name “First Night,” however, was trademarked even before that, Earls said, because as interest escalated they wanted to ensure the event’s integrity, to “make sure that any old thing on New Year’s Eve wouldn’t be called First Night.”
First Night celebrations occur in cities large and small, and while inner cities are part of the focus, the concept is really communal, Earls said, with 80 percent of First Nights now held in towns with less than 100,000 in population.
At its highest growth, leading up to last year’s millennium observance, there were about 20 new cities joining each year, but growth has now moderated to between eight and 10.
To secure the First Night trademark, a sponsoring group must be nonprofit, local and tax-exempt and pay a one-time initiation fee. As of Jan. 1, 2000, fees ranged from $1,000 for populations under 25,000 to $5,000 for cities over 1,000,000.
There are also annual dues ranging from $250 to $750, also based on population, and celebrations must be non-alcoholic, focus on visual and performing arts with special emphasis to local artists, and must be culturally diverse, accessible and affordable.
To pay for itself, First Night organizations rely most heavily on corporate sponsorship and sale of admission buttons, along with grants, merchandise sales and government support.
In Providence, organizers say the sale of $9 and $12 admission buttons covers nearly one-half of the festival’s costs, and corporate support about the other one half. Its highest sponsors this year, with gifts of $25,000 and above, are the State of Rhode Island, the City of Providence and Fleet.
Rhode Island’s only other First Night celebration, now in its sixth year, takes place in Westerly.
Its sponsors, said First Night Westerly Chairwoman Mary Lou Serra, include The Washington Trust Co., Westerly Savings Bank, Moore’s, Citizens Bank, Westerly Community Credit Union and The Westerly Sun. She said they also receive contributions from the state and the town. “It’s basically your same groups, your staples,” Serra said. “Without that support you’d be in big trouble.”
Button sales typically generate, depending on weather, about half to three-quarters of the approximately $55,000 it costs to stage First Night Westerly, with the rest coming from private donations and grants, Serra said. Approximately 3,000 to 4,000 revelers typically come, depending on weather. “We’re small. We’re not Providence,” she said, although her entertainment budget this year is about $25,500, and “I always go over.”
First Night Westerly will feature 30 performers at about 14 venues, with acts for all ages ranging from two fireworks displays, magicians and jugglers to Dixieland bands and classical, folk and blues.
For performers “the exposure is enormous,” Serra said, and she gets calls for information on their celebration from as far away as Long Island and Maine.
