Worcester hopes cultural base will fuel city
Photo | Matt Wright
The POW! WOW! Worcester mural on the Palladium in downtown Worcester.
A minor league baseball team. A mid-level professional hockey club. A top-50 theater worldwide that can seat about 2,300. Nine institutions of higher education. Myriad breweries. A well-established cultural scene.
These are some of the institutions that public and private officials say are driving a cultural renaissance in Worcester over the last decade. The downtown is flourishing with small businesses, cultural projects, and larger entertainment venues that have the potential to draw thousands to the city.
Over the last several years, the art and restaurant scene in downtown Worcester has evolved and younger people are moving to the city. For Che Anderson, an assistant vice chancellor at UMass Medical School, the evolution is built on a history of innovation and the success that the city is experiencing now is a result of projects that have been around for years.
"All of the amazing things that are coming now are just sort of quite literally standing on the tops of giants that came before," he said during a virtual forum on Tuesday. "Whether it's you know mural festivals that owe their success to the successes of street festivals that started in the street or out in the park as a public art festival, or it's looking at what our big cultural seat institutions have been able to do, the Hanover Theatre and Art Museum."
But like many cities, Worcester's business, arts, and entertainment offerings were touched by the pandemic. Take The Hanover Theatre, run by President Troy Siebels, which vaulted into the top 50 venues worldwide when it opened as Worcester was one of the biggest cities where residents couldn't see a touring Broadway show.
Over the last year, Siebel said, the venue lost 90 percent of its revenue and had to place staff on furlough or reduce working hours. To mitigate revenue losses, the theatre continued to host conservatory classes which Siebel said have "been a big success in this."
"We're doing some other programming to try to keep ourselves vibrant during this time," he said during the forum. "But the touring in the entertainment industry has a really long ramp up so we're looking and hopeful for a reopening post Labor Day. At this point, it's just not feasible to reopen until we can be at full capacity as you need to hit 70 or 80 percent just to break even."
Anderson and Siebel joined Redemption Rock Brewing Co. CEO Dani Babineau, Worcester Railers HC President Stephanie Ramey, and Creative Hub Worcester Executive Director Laura Marotta for a virtual forum hosted by the Worcester Business Journal and State House News Service to explore how Worcester's cultural and civic life have helped further the city's path to newfound success.
Dotted throughout the city and surrounding outskirts are a number of breweries. From Wormtown Brewing to Redemption Rock Co., the city has made a name for itself in the craft beer industry.
Redemption Rock opened at the end of January 2019 and was only a year old before the business had to shut down from mid-March to the end of June 2020 as a result of restrictive public health measures aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19.
With people spending more time at home, the Alcohol Beverages Control Commission documented a 300 percent increase in direct-to-consumer alcohol beverage deliveries during the pandemic, according to State Treasurer Deborah Goldberg.
But Babineau said the different parts of the alcohol sector have been affected differently. Redemption Rock started as a tap room only establishment and only expanded to canning beer around November 2019.
"We were able to kind of keep that up but also working with a small mobile canner, rather than having our own canning line, definitely made things difficult, or just a little bit more difficult than if we had had the ability to put everything immediately into cans," she said. "We essentially have a cap on what we're able to do into cans so we really do rely on taproom sales."
Despite the challenges associated with the pandemic, Babineau said the crisis created unexpected surprises.
"But given those challenges, we've really felt embraced by the city of Worcester and really grateful for that year that we had to kind of create relationships with customers and have this amazing, loyal fan base of people," she said. "People who now come in more often because we're the only place they go to so we've been able to have real friendships emerge with a lot of our customers."
And for those who do want to go to a brewery, there are also more opportunities emerging to watch live sports.
The Worcester Red Sox are finishing up their Polar Park Stadium and the Worcester Railers Hockey Club are looking forward to hitting the ice once again.
Ramey, the president of the Railers, said the team plans to come back in October.
"I think the Railers will be a place where people can not only celebrate Worcester's hockey team in October, but also sort of celebrate navigating through these really crazy times," she said.
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Most of us can't even afford any of these schools here. With the increasing property values fueling the greed, many of us will have to move.
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