Promotions aim at boosting downtown customer traffic

Organizers of Dinner & a Movie are calling the downtown summer promotion a success, and they're now at work on a separate program to build attendance at live theater venues and bring more people to center city.

Downtown Springfield Association's Dinner & a Movie promotion ran June-August, said DSA Coordinator Kathryn Vicat.

People could buy $5 movie tickets for Hollywood Theaters College Station Stadium 14 or Moxie Cinema when they dined at one of 17 participating downtown restaurants.

All told, more than 7,000 movie tickets were sold, with Springfield Brewing Co. leading the way with 1,640 of them.

"We had been working with some of the Downtown Springfield Association members on ways to encourage people to patronize more than one business at a time, to make it an experience," Vicat said. "We've been pushing that downtown experience and promoting that over the last year or so, and it seemed like a great fit with Hollywood Theaters coming on board and expansion of the Moxie."

The live version

Because of the support for Dinner & a Movie, downtown advocates began exploring ways to encourage attendance at live theater performances. The result is D-Tix, which Vicat said will be a wholesale outlet for available theater tickets at downtown venues.

D-Tix is a joint effort of DSA, Springfield Theatre Alliance and Urban Districts Alliance.

Participating theaters - which include The Skinny Improv, Springfield Little Theater, and Vandivort Center Theatre - will provide unused performance tickets at half price on show days at a centralized location, Coffee Ethic, on a first-come, first-serve basis. The available shows will be posted on a board inside the coffeeshop, 124 Park Central Square.

"People can ... check the board, see what's available, get their tickets on-site and then go right to the show," Vicat said.

UDA's Rusty Worley said plans are to launch D-Tix by Oct. 1, and it will run through Dec. 31.

"In trying to identify where there are natural collaborations that offer good value and set downtown apart from other options for dining, shopping or entertainment, that's where the Dinner & a Movie program really struck a chord, because it (accomplished) all those things," Worley said, noting that D-Tix also can meet the same goals, even though there's not a restaurant component.

"(People) can still, hopefully, build on the practice of having dinner and a show, by supporting those restaurants and then going to the theater," he added.

Vandivort Theatre has worked with DSA regularly to encourage people to come downtown for dining, shopping and entertainment, said Executive Producer Louis Schaeffer, who also is head of Springfield Theatre Alliance. After the success of the Dinner & a Movie promotion, DSA approached the alliance about the possibility of putting together a special deal for live performances, he said.

"The half-price ticket is very popular in New York City, Chicago, Boston. Several of the large cities have this ... to accommodate people who are hesitant about purchasing a ticket at full price," Shaeffer said. "The idea is to help the theaters out by filling up those extra seats that may, for one reason or another, go unoccupied, and also to attract, hopefully, new audiences who will take a chance on live theater at a very, very affordable price."

Schaeffer noted that there are no guarantees as to how many tickets will be available through D-Tix for specific shows. He said individual venues will likely decide which tickets to make available by noon each day so that people can pick them up during the lunch hour.

"Some theaters may have 10 or 20 seats," Schaeffer said. "My (guess) is that fewer tickets may be sent over for Fridays and Saturdays because we all get more advance reservations for the weekends, but who knows?"

Bringing people downtown

Worley expects to announce 2009 details for Downtown Dollars in November. That promotion, which dates back several years, is timed to coincide with holiday shopping and allows shoppers to buy gift certificates that can be used at participating downtown venues.

The Night on the Town promotion, which combines Downtown Dollars with taxi rides for those who might be consuming alcoholic beverages while dining downtown also likely will return.

One reason groups such as UDA and DSA continue trying new ways to entice people downtown is because those efforts are continually supported by downtown businesses.

"I think there are a couple of reasons for that. With downtown, you're dealing with more independent, local merchants, so they can make decisions locally," Worley said. "Also, the reason that they're down here in center city is that they like the feeling of community, and they feel connected not just their particular storefront, but the entire area and recognize that they're a part of this revitalization."[[In-content Ad]]