Manhattan Chamber CEO Jessica Walker testifies on five lessons
Jessica Walker says the Manhattan Chamber represents 125,000 businesses and that domestic visitors to Manhattan rose 8.3% during the tournament. She outlines five lessons: benefits stayed in the core, visitors went to New Jersey, coordination came late, nightlife restrictions hurt, and street event permitting is too expensive.
Good afternoon, chairs.
I'm Jessica Walker, president and CEO of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, representing 125,000 businesses.
New York delivered this summer.
$2 billion, 12,000 jobs, sports bars up 16%.
Our own Placer AI analysis found domestic visitors to Manhattan, domestic visitors, rose 8.3% during the tournament, the strongest gain of any borough.
But the summer taught us five lessons, and each points to a fix.
First, the benefits appear to have stayed largely in the core.
Washington Heights, Inwood, and East Harlem, the neighborhoods with the deepest ties to the competing nations, saw domestic visits actually fall 5% to 8%.
Domestic.
Domestic tourists, again.
Mega event traffic does not spread on its own.
The Fix is a funded five borough tourism initiative that plans spillover in advance and allows more fan zones, block parties in the neighborhood corridors for every future major event.
Second, we sent visitors to New Jersey.
Airbnb's data shows 55% of guests who booked in New Jersey looked at New York City first.
Hotels trailed last year for most of the term.
tournament while affordable option
were off the market.
The fix is Intro 879, letting owner occupants of one and two family homes host guests and narrowing the 2021 hotel special permit.
Third, coordination came late.
Planning for the tournament straddled a mayoral transition.
And business groups and bids were brought in after the key decisions on programming and promotion had been made.
The fix is a standing mega event playbook with business groups at the table from day one.
Fourth, visitors who wanted to keep the night going often found bars and restaurants closed early.
Boilerplate community board stipulations ban dancing and live music at ordinary restaurants and force most new venues to close by midnight on weekends, even when mega events arrive.
The fix is stipulation standards and piloting the creation of 24-hour districts.
Fifth.
The watch parties and soccer streets prove the demand for street life, but fees of up to $66,000 a day and a street fare moratorium mean that energy disappears when the tournament ends.
The fix is a single window sliding fee street event permit.
We had the world's attention this summer.
Let's use it to reclaim our title as the city that never sleeps and make sure the party reaches every neighborhood.
Thank you.