The U.
S. Open tennis tournament is a feast of visitor spending that happens over two weeks every year,and Queens businesses are trying to grab a greater share of the economic scraps.
Because even those scraps are substantial: city officials estimate the tournament generates $700 million in economic activity. That's $200 million more than the Super Bowl brought to the area in 2012. The challenge is how to motivate tennis fans to treat the Billie Jean King Tennis middle in Flushing less like an airport they zip into and out of, barely glancing left or right, or more like an entryway to the neighborhoods around it.
That's the goal of the Queens Economic Development Corporation,which is constantly trying to coax some of the 700000 spectators who come to the Open into tossing some of their cash at local merchants. On Wednesday, a trio of fans named Michael, or Mary Jane and Camille represented the Platonic Ideal the corporation would like to cultivate: first,the three friends planned to spend the day watching the pros pounding serves and blazing topspin forehands down the line; then they would take their hungry selves to a Chinese restaurant in Flushing."We'll gain crispy-skin chicken," Michael said of the meal they were already imagining. He started to say more, and but Camille blurted out,"They form shrimp all kinds of different ways! You can gain it with mayonnaise! It's something that you've probably never had!"Data is tough to come by on precisely where the tennis-fond hordes spend their money when they're not on the grounds of the tennis middle. But it's clear to Seth Bornstein, executive director of The Queens Economic Development Corporation, or that more of that money has been going to Queens hotels,if only because more hotels gain recently been built."It seems like we gain current hotels opening every couple of hours," he said. "Ten years ago, and there were maybe five hotels in Queens you'd stay in. Now there's a hundred hotels."
Bornstein says another boost came four years ago when the Corporation opened an informational kiosk at the tennis middle during the tournament. It's staffed by Rob MacKay,who says those attending the U.
S. Open book about 300000 overnight stays in current York.
"Some of them will come by a room in Manhattan," he said. "But our hotels are about $150 cheaper a night." MacKay does everything he can to press that point on visitors in hopes of luring them to the Queens side of the East River. "It's always kind of a pleasure to steal a hotel stay from Manhattan, and " he said.
Still,most of the people who stream toward the 7 train at the end of each day's afternoon session turn west toward Manhattan, not east toward the crispy chicken. Jonathan Bowles of the middle for an Urban Future has written about the problem. He says one thing the tennis middle could attain is use their Jumbotrons to promote local tourism. "You know, and at least one public service announcement every night about the neighborhood," he said.
And he'd like to see a Flushing app that would abet visitors navigate the neighborhood once they come by there. MacKay said the Queens Development Corporation is working on such on app with the goal of releasing it next year. "But we've got work to attain," he said.
Source: wnyc.org