thisisntmynametoday t1_iyaeb2f wrote on November 29, 2022 at 10:55 PM

Reply to comment by your_city_councilor in Paying Polar Park’s debt: For the second year, underwhelming tax collections were saved by a public property sale by outb0undflight

Public market businesses have been quoted on the record talking about downturns in business during games. Especially on weekends.

Ballparks are a black hole for local businesses. While they might drive pre and post game crowds to neighboring places, it’s in the most inconvenient times when it’s a night game. 5-7pm and 11pm-close aren’t the best times for restaurants. It’s good for bars.

6-9 pm is the prime dining time for most customers, and many will stay away on game day due to the crowds and perception of lack of parking, inconvenience, etc.

If you are a restaurant staying open later to catch a ballpark crowd that has already been eating and drinking inside, you are gambling. People might go home. They might be full and only want to drink at a bar, not a restaurant.

And if your dining room is empty 6-9pm because of the public’s reluctance to dine during games, then you are losing money. It costs money to open your doors, and it costs a lot more to staff up for 12+ hours a day. That requires a lot more employees than you might afford for a gamble.

Jerry Remy’s restaurant opened up right across from the right field corner at Fenway. Prime spot, but they couldn’t make a living off of being slammed 81 home games a year, then much smaller crowds the rest of the time. https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/03/04/closure-jerry-remy-restaurant-preceded-years-financial-struggle/d84dQz01W7Xwmh9GqpWnoL/story.html

your_city_councilor t1_iybhwe4 wrote on November 30, 2022 at 3:56 AM

>5-7pm and 11pm-close aren’t the best times for restaurants. It’s good for bars.

But restaurants have to cater to the people who are going to be around them. Having a staff there from 5-7 and working to entice people who are walking from parking inside, and maybe doing something in terms of advertising.

What did, say, the barbecue spot actually do to try to attract people who were going to the games? Weekends they were 12-8, other days of the week they were open 4-8? What kinds of hours are those?

thisisntmynametoday t1_iybu9ej wrote on November 30, 2022 at 5:54 AM

The ballpark has 75 home games a year. There’s about 24 weeks to the season, and maybe half of those weekends have home games Friday-Saturday.

That is 12 weekends a year where a ballpark adjacent business is going to see a significant decrease in business due to the ballpark on weekends, which is when restaurants make the most money.

Trying to “attract” a percentage of the ~9000 fans who attend a 3+ hour baseball game isn’t feasible. Most people go out for a drink or two before the game. Most aren’t going to add in 1.5 hours to sit down for a meal before or after the game. Weeknight games start at 6:35pm. Realistically, who is getting out of work early to go eat before the game, and who is going to go out to eat at 10pm after the game? Not many. Study after study shows that fans spend most of their money and time inside the ballpark, and the perception of crowds on game day drive away other customers.

Across the board businesses in the Canal District (not just restaurants) have said sales are down on game days because customers stay away on game days because of traffic, congestion, a lack of parking, 2 hour meters, and an absolute lack of public transport.

Have you ever worked in the restaurant industry? Restaurants stay open for the hours that people show up. Adding hours means adding employees, adding product, and additional costs. You just can’t decide a few weeks a year to have odd hours and add in temp workers. That’s not how the industry works. Off hours are off hours for a reason, and you will lose money trying to attract customers in during off hours.

your_city_councilor t1_iye5tkk wrote on November 30, 2022 at 6:56 PM

>Have you ever worked in the restaurant industry? Restaurants stay open for the hours that people show up.

Yes, I've spent years working in the restaurant industry. Restaurants change their hours around, experimenting to figure out what's best for attracting customers.

And the whole parking issue as an argument against Polar Park makes no sense to me. It's an argument for keeping the neighborhood unpopulated, aside from a couple of restaurants and bars that don't bring too many people. If parking is the issue, then the restaurants should petition the city to build a garage. One (at least) was built by the park already.

Lack of public transport is also an issue that can and should be addressed, but it's not an argument against the park, either. Worcester - including its businesses - either needs to resign itself to being a decaying mill town or it needs to be creative.

thisisntmynametoday t1_iyerab4 wrote on November 30, 2022 at 9:14 PM

If you’ve worked in a restaurant than you know having food service past 10pm is a way to barely break even during those hours and burn out BOH staff. And you would know that pregame hours in the early afternoon are usually slow as well. Money is made during weekends and dinner service, and having 75 days a year, including ~12 weekends a year with ballpark induced reductions in revenue is tough to recover from.

It you want to succeed in off hours, you need to be a bar, first and foremost. Worcester is nowhere near close enough to being an 18 hour city.

Business owners have repeatedly said parking is an issue, specifically the 2 hour limits on street parking without renewals and stringent parking enforcement. Businesses have said that their staff struggle to find parking, and face a lot of tickets.

The lack of parking in the neighborhood was an issue on weekends before the park, and it’s made far worse by adding in~9000 fans 75 days a year. The city closed a municipal lot on Green Street. That’s something that should have been addressed since the planning phase of the park. Building one garage in the second year of operations is a developer and city failure. Placing the burden on business owners to petition for basic levels of competency from developers and the city is incredibly myopic and condescending.

Scholarship has repeatedly shown that tax payer funded ballparks are a black hole, and not the economic saviors people think they are. Worcester just chose to ignore that and gave away millions of taxpayer funded bonds to the millionaire owners of a AAA team.

The only way out of this is a massive investment in public transport, walkable neighborhoods, and a series of parking options to help with the influx of visitors for games. Also, we need to kill the idea that outside developers have our best interests at heart. Build up and invest the community we have, not the outside investors the Chamber of Commerce has always tried (and failed) to help invest in our city.