Community Events
Foster City's Parks and Recreation Department actively participates in planning and facilitating a huge number of large and small community events every year.
In 2015, the Parks and Recreation Department is planning and facilitating over 30 community events and participating in many more, both large and small.
Community Events celebrate cultural heritage and community holidays as well as promote health and fitness and just plain fun! Some examples include the Fourth of July Festival, Polynesian Festival, Community Bike Ride, Holi Festival, Lunar New Year Celebration, Halloween Festival, Tree Lighting Ceremony and various lagoon-related events. Find out what's happening in 2015 here.
Events are great for building community, but they are also great for promoting economic development for the City. Economic impact is money that goes to our local businesses, and then, in part, flows back to the City in the form of taxes, benefiting all the residents of Foster City. Based on a general formula for calculating the economic impact of Community Events, the impact of Foster City's three largest annual community events are estimated as:
$260,000 Arts and Wine Festival (20,000 attendees)
$208,000 Fourth of July Festival (16,000 attendees)
$156,000 Summer Concert Series (12,000 attendees)
$624,000 Large-Scale Special Events Annual Economic Impact
How Do We Estimate the Economic Impact of Large Special Events?
Although it is not possible to calculate the exact economic impact of a large-scale community event, Professor John Crompton, a distinguished professor of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences at Texas A7M University has developed a formula for calculating an estimate.
The Formula for Economic Impact of Large Special Events
Total number of attendees * 40% (non-resident attendees) * $32.50 per attendee
Assumptions
Additional economic impact for the community is mainly garnered from non-residents since residents are more likely to already spend their money in the city. As a general guideline (and based on informal surveys done in Foster City), 40-50% of Special Event attendees are non-residents.
As a general guideline, the average economic input is $32.50 per person, which is composed of $10-25 in food, beverages, rides and activities and $10-20 on souvenirs, groceries, picnic supplies, other retail stores, gas, and transportation.
