"The rest of the country looked at Denver and they said wow," said Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.
Hickenlooper says the convention ultimately brought in $260 million of economic benefit. That's far greater than the $160 million that was forecast. ... Millions rolled in for improvements that have stayed with the city like the dollars for emergency services. Hickenlooper says long-term hotel bookings done months and years ahead of time rose. He also says there's been an increase in inquiries from businesses that want to talk about a possible move to Denver.
"I think Denver's been better off economically for the last year because those conventions were booked and people are coming when tourism is down," Weil said. "There were people who've never been here before who came and found us."
$260 million of economic benefit?
An economic-impact study of the DNC calculated direct and indirect spending at $266.1 million. That makes the convention the biggest single event in Denver history and outdistances the estimated financial effect of last September's Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., and the 2004 Democratic and Republican conventions in Boston and New York. -Denver Post
then again:
"I am skeptical of a report sponsored by the host committee purportedly showing that the host committee did a great job," said Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.
In a 2008 study of political conventions since 1972, Matheson and other researchers concluded that "the promoters' rosy economic projections are overstated, and these events have a negligible impact on local economies."
So where does that leave us? Conventions bring in money. How much money is open to debate as other events are displaced. Then there's the hard-to-measure status impact for a city like Denver. But overall, the experiences of Denver and St. Paul will likely encourage cities to bid for the 2012 conventions.
