City Cultural Arts Manager 5/4/2018 (2)

attendance grew by an astounding 20%. To continue our great service to our ADA guests and provide safe access and egress to Sorticulture we will incur additional expenses to hire off-duty police officers or certified flaggers. Everett Transit is at capacity and we are considering hiring private buses for guests, as well as a van service for our vendors who we are encouraging to park off-site, allowing for more ADA parking on-site. These accommodations to Sorticulture's growing popularity will certainly impact our budget. PROJECT SCOPE OF WORK Fully describe the project. Expand your summary paragraph from page one to address such issues as:what it is you wish to do; who will benefit and why and how; beginning and ending dates of your project; and what measures you will apply to evaluate its success. ;If you are requesting funds for a specific portion of a larger project,please so state but focus your response on the element for which you are requesting funding assistance. This section requires that you to establish,in a clear and quantifiable way,that your project will sustain or enhance one or more aspects (to be identified by you) of tourism in the City of Everett. Proposals from projects that can prove they will generate overnight stays are preferred. Please coordinate your project's milestones with the time line on page 7 of this package. What it is we wish to do: We would like to use LTAC support to reinforce awareness of Sorticulture and also to bring first—time visitors to the festival and Everett. We had tremendous success this last year growing the number of out of county visitors: 54% of visitors came from outside Snohomish County! We will expand our audience through editorial coverage- articles written — particularly for the travel magazine industry, for example, Ontrak, 1889 and Sunset magazines. In 2017, Ciscoe Morris wrote a feature article for the Seattle Times Pacific magazine which we credit with growing Sorticulture's attendance by 20%! Who will benefit and why and how: City of Everett: any time we can bring someone to Everett for an excellent experience, the city stands to gain — by establishing Everett as a beautiful city worthy of return visits. Sorticulture receives excellent media attention. For instance, Ciscoe Morris promotes Sorticulture on his King 5 televsion show as well as his Seattle Times gardening column. He says Sorticulture is his favorite garden arts festival That type of `word of mouth' recommendation from a trusted friend is invaluable! • Everett attractionsand restaurants: local restaurants always increase staffing over Sorticulture weekend, because their restaurants are full- especially our waterfront restaurants! • Everett hotels: In 2017, Sorticulture vendors alone accounted for 150 overnight stays in Everett. Our vendors typically stay over four nights. Beginning and ending dates of project: Sorticulture is June 8, 9& 10, 2017. What measures we will apply to evaluate success: • Attendance figures: since 2008, we have kept a gate count of attendees, measured by day and hour. This gives us excellent comparative data over the past nine years. We will keep a gate countagain this year. • Attendee surveys: each year, we survey approximately 2,000 attendees. This year, we will focus on surveying attendees at the shuttle bus stop location. This makes them more willing to share data as they are waiting for the bus. We will also clearly identify volunteers as survey takers on behalf of Sorticulture. The problem we have dealt with in -the past is impatience on the part of those surveyed to answer questions. •' Vendor surveys: each year, we survey our vendors about where they stayed overnight, how much revenue they generated over the Weekend, etc. • Hotel promotion codes:,`after working with our hoteliers, it has become clear that promotion codes to identify overnight stays have inherent problems: many people do not 4