Baltimore's 2009 Artscape festival cost $860,000 and returned $25.97 million in art and food sales, taxes collected, hotel bookings and other revenues.
I'm impressed. Are you? Please notice before you get carried away thinking that the producers of the event are getting richer while you get poorer the high cost of putting on the event. Did that $25 million go back to the producers? No. Putting on art festivals is a very expensive venture, yet they are wonderful economic drivers for a region bringing in good money for not only artists and food vendors, but hotels, nearby restaurants, gas stations and tax revenues.
Bill Gilmore of the BOPA said his office had attempted informally to calculate the economic impact in the past, but this is the first time a market research firm was hired to study the events as they were taking place. The research group studied Artscape, the Baltimore Book Festival and the Inner Harbor New Year's celebration.
Read the rest of this article here: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bal-md.artscape28feb28,0,6437681.story
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