Imagine how
Fountain Square Managing Director Bill Donabedian felt last summer when he invited such sought-after national and international indie rock acts as Camera Obscura, Neon Indian and We Are Scientists to play the Friday night MidPoint Indie Summer event on the Square. Picture the look on his face as the musicians arrived to find, well, let's call it 'modest' staging and lighting.
"We had cobbled together a support structure and put it under a tent with some lights, but it was painfully obvious that if we expected to get bigger bands this year they would say, 'this does not meet our specs,'" said Donabedian of the low, tiny stage and meager lighting that greeted the out-of-town acts. "By the end of the night they were okay with the PA and the stage not being up to their standard because of the crowds we drew and the energy and some of the biggest audiences they'd ever played to, but the initial reaction was, 'what is this?'"
Notwithstanding the staging, the
PNC Summer Music Series on the Square was an unqualified success, drawing more than 150,000 people to the heart of downtown on a mid-six figure budget. But Donabedian knew something had to change in 2011. Enter P&G.
The hometown Fortune 500 company had been looking for a way to get more involved in the seven nights a week of summer music Donabedian and his staff were putting together for Fountain Square, and the opportunity to upgrade the performance space was just the opening they needed.
"P&G understood that we needed something that matched the high-quality of the rest of the Square and so it was a no brainer," Donabedian said.
He put 3CD3's Sponsorship Manager, Casey Gilmore, on the job and she saw an opportunity to expand on the already unprecedented slate of programming on the Square, which is underwritten by title sponsor
PNC Bank. For the past four years, the bank has sponsored
14 weeks of summer evening events that include Southern Sound Tuesdays, a popular reggae night on Wednesday, salsa Thursdays and, new this summer, SLAM, a Saturday night indie hip-hop event.
Gilmore said PNC upped its offering for 2011, amazed at what she said has been a near tripling of attendance each year. But when she went in to meet with P&G it was not more sponsorship money she had in mind.
"They've always looked to have an all-year presence on Fountain Square and we've worked with them seasonally for one event each series or across all the seasons, but the idea of investing in something that is there 52 weeks a year was exciting," Gilmore said.
Under its Gain brand, P&G had been providing steadily increasing sponsorship for salsa night as attendance blossomed and Donabedian looked to book bigger and better Latin bands. But Gilmore said it was clear that they'd "hit the wall" in terms of what could be booked because of the staging. After spending a year talking to PNC and other potential sponsors, the answer was clear.
A five-year agreement between P&G and Fountain Square will bring new staging, state-of-the-art lighting and sound equipment, and provide for the ongoing care and maintenance of the new set up. The company's presence will be felt through the backdrop of the stage, which will change to represent different P&G brands, as well as an overhead sign at the top of the stage that will announce the company's involvement. (A spokesperson for P&G did not return requests for comment.) Donabedian preferred not to put a price tag on the P&G investment, but he said it was "big" (in the six figures).
While the branding and potentially hundreds of thousands of impressions seem worth the investment, what PNC and P&G are ultimately doing is helping put Cincinnati on the national map as an innovator in the private funding of public events.
"I've looked at what other cities are doing, and I've looked everywhere, and nobody is doing six nights of free music a week all summer long," Donabedian said, noting that the only other comparable program is the one in Portland's
Pioneer Courthouse Square, where they outsource most of the booking, have a larger staff and lack such additional responsibilities as managing a parking garage and programming Fountain Square's giant LED board.
Since its $48 million renovation in 2005, Fountain Square has quickly become the vibrant hub that Donabedian imagined when he took over as the space's Managing Director in March of 2006. It is now home to broomball tournaments, wine tastings, fish tosses, the Cinciditarod, oyster, beer and coffee festivals and just about anything else the 3CDC staff can come up with to get people downtown.
Most importantly, both Gilmore and Donabedian said it's a launch pad for everything else that's happening downtown and a major catalyst for the revival of an area whose early 2000s decline may be ancient history to many who attend events there now.
"Having the larger stage will bring bigger acts and hopefully appeal to the region - Lexington, Louisville, Columbus and Indianapolis - especially for a younger generation that won't hesitate to jump in a car and drive down, or stay overnight in downtown," predicted Gilmore.
Even without the proper staging, the Indie Summer series boasted such in-demand bands as the Fiery Furnaces in 2009 among others, but Donabedian is thinking bigger for 2011. You can expect the return of Neon Indian, one of last summer's biggest acts, and several more headline names to be announced soon.
One of the people charged with locking in the talent that will draw those crowds is veteran Cincinnati booker Dan McCabe, Marketing and Promotions manager for
Citybeat, part owner of Over-the-Rhine's
MOTR Pub and producer of the
MidPoint Music Festival.
"Bill's vision for exulting the local music scene is the genesis of what's happening here and it's completely unique," said McCabe, who works with another local booking vet, Puck Dunaway, on the Square's summer line-up. "It's completely unique to have a major city's front porch handed over to local [and national] musicians as often as it is."
McCabe harnesses his 20 years of contacts to land breaking bands on the national radar, while Dunaway keeps him on budget and fills out the summer series with the hottest local and regional acts. "The fact that it's privately funded and the city doesn't lift a finger? It's fantastic!" McCabe said. "It gives us the latitude to do what we want to and … I think it appeals to the very type of young people we're targeting, who live downtown or in Over-the-Rhine and are interested in pioneering. This music reflects that and so does the crowd."
In Donabedian's rosiest projection, his team could raise an extra $1 million a year and book a string of headliner-worthy $20,000 acts that would flood downtown with young and old music fans every weekend.
"If I lived in Cincinnati and I found out Indy had a free Wilco show, I would go see it," he said. "Why not be the first city to do that?"
It's easy to forget what a ghost town the area around the Square was on weekends before the nearly $150 million in investment that's taken place since its renovation. So while Donabedian has his eye on a wide demographic of people to fill the now-vibrant front porch, he's also intensely focused on those who live, work and play downtown.
"They're the ones who are most likely to say, 'I'm going to move there. I want to live there, I love this," he said. "Other cities are calling and asking how we're doing this. They know we're doing something right and they're not … and we're not doing it with tax dollars. All we're doing is providing great entertainment and the people of Cincinnati should be excited and proud about that."
Donabedian said the new stage could be in place by the end or March, or by Memorial Day at the latest.
Photography by Scott Beseler.
Brian Olive
Casey Gilmore and Bill Donabedian
Crowd surfing at Fountain Square
Fiery Furnaces
Dan McCabe
Neon Indian