It was announced yesterday, that it is to be believed that Pittsburgh received a $35 million increase in profits during the G-20 Summit held here last week.
“The immediate impact we’ve marked at $35 million in return,” said Joe McGrath, CEO of VisitPittsburgh, a nonprofit tourism agency.
However, this doesn’t include the cost of business relocating for the week, and $16 million total that it actually cost to host this event in Pittsburgh. I’d like to see the real numbers when all this is done and where the actual profitable returns went, because I’m more than sure that hardly any of it went to the locals around here. Also, they said that only 20% of the original workforce and actual tourists were downtown to visit the golden triangle, not counting the protesters. So where did this money come from and where did it go?
Here is a snippet from the TribOnline detailing what people and local business actually lost during the Summit:
Kevin Joyce, owner of The Carlton and Eadie’s Kitchen & Market, Downtown, estimated he lost as much as $50,000 in business from Wednesday through Friday.
The Carlton was open each day, but Eadie’s closed Thursday and Friday because security fences made it all but inaccessible. He remains supportive of Pittsburgh’s decision to host the summit but said security planners overreacted
“We handled it wrong. … If we’re going to say we’re a big-league city, the big leagues don’t close their urban corridor” for events like this, Joyce said.
He stopped at The Capital Grille and Six Penn during the Thursday lunch hour and said they and the Carlton each had one group of diners.
“The city was open. This office was open. We did our best … to encourage people to come to town,” Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said. “Do I wish more people would have stayed open? Yes.”
Sure thing G20Stal, you did your best, in blocking off half of downtown Pittsburgh, and beefing up the police to a point that it actually was scary to not be a protester and in the thick of things down there. Although great things came from the actual process of creating the area blocked off from the city. They called it a “mini-industrial process,” as stated below:
Setting up, maintaining and tearing down equipment in the convention center became a temporary industry, said Mark Leahy, general manager for SMG, which operates the center.
Leahy said 41,000 labor hours were required to pull off the summit there, including tearing down. A staff of 400 workers made it happen, he said.
The next largest event in terms of labor hours was the Major League Baseball All-Star Game’s Fan Fest in 2006, which required 12,000 labor hours.
“It was a tremendous setup, one we have never seen before, to transfer 236,000 square feet of space into a world-class summit,” he said.
All in all, I guess it could be called a success. With the exception of the minor damage on Thursday’s protests, and then in Oakland. Pittsburgh made it out scott-free, and hopefully this gets our big city even more recognition.
September 29th, 2009 at 2:12 PM
Well, I’d like to see some more thorough financial analysis, as well. They can give the warm and fuzzies all they like but most people know that there are a lot of costs associated with this event. I still support it and think it was a good idea, I just don’t like the way-too-positive spin.