LYNN — When the Lynn Auditorium’s 2,083 seats sell, Community Development Director Jamie Marsh said, the whole city benefits.
The Lynn Auditorium sells tickets for a wide variety of acts — from the Beatles cover band production RAIN, to the psychic medium Matt Fraser. But as Massachusetts residents flock to Lynn to buy a show ticket, water, or beer, the business does not stop there.
Marsh has overseen booking and promoting each of the auditorium’s weekly shows since 2001. He said that he’s not motivated as much by the auditorium turning a profit as he is by the shows’ economic ripples through the community.
“My goal really isn’t to make money for the auditorium. My goal is the economic spin off that occurs before and after the show,” Marsh said. “That happens outside the auditorium doors before and after the show when all these people are going to the restaurants, people are using a parking lot, going to bars … these places are jam packed the night of the show and then after the show as well — that translates into more business.”
Earlier this month, Marsh announced that the grammy-winning rapper Pitbull would take to the auditorium stage March 12. Tickets nearly sold out within two weeks, he said. Marsh said that the auditorium’s ability to afford bigger acts is a sign of the auditorium, and the city’s growth.
“Five, six, seven years ago, I couldn’t afford an act like Pitbull or Nelly or FLO RIDA or Bad Company in the very beginning. I think there just wasn’t enough money in the account to buy bigger shows and it’s just gotten to the point where we can do that,” Marsh said. “We bring in 2000 people from outside Lynn into the downtown — that’s huge.”
Lazy Dog Sports Bar owner Tom Dill said that even though his 328 Broadway bar is quite the distance from downtown Lynn, he puts extra staff on shift when there’s a big act at the Lynn Auditorium.
“If it’s the shows that people really like to go see, I throw some extra staff on, because the place fills up and they’re all here — they’re all excited to get down and see the show. They have a nice meal and they head out, so I go from zero to 90 and then back down to zero again in about two hours. It’s great — It’s extra business you normally wouldn’t have on those days,” Dill said.
Dill added that Lynn Auditorium shows not only bring an influx of customers before and after shows, but that popular shows, in the past, have brought him new regular customers.
“You usually have a group of people that come down, and then they bring in some other people that haven’t been with them in the past and they say ‘this is part of our routine when we go the show, we come down here and we have dinner.’ They’ll bring some new people and then they come back on their own,” Dill said. “Those shows have been very good. From what I can see, all the restaurants get a piece of it.”
Only a block down the street from City Hall, R.F. O’Sullivan’s pub on Central Avenue sees large customer spikes from auditorium shows as well. General Manager Richard Sullivan said for some shows, the restaurant gets so crowded that he will send customers to nearby restaurants.
“We get pretty full. We’ll have a couple, three, four deep at the bar, you know, we kind of try to make sure everyone’s seated. Once you get to full capacity, if we can’t seat the people, we like to send them off to other businesses, you know, there’s Asian Garden, Los Pinos and all those types of places,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan, like Dill, said that the concert shows bring out-of-town regulars into O’Sullivan’s on weekends.
“Concerts are our icing on the cake — they bring that extra revenue, and they bring new business along,” Sullivan said. “For these shows, people drive from out of state — New Hampshire, Maine, you name it. People will say ‘Oh, we came here before the show, and we just loved it so much that we decided to take the day trip, you know and come here and try it again.’ We get people from all over, and we hear it all the time.”
By bringing in thousands of visitors into the city each week, Marsh said that the auditorium not only fosters economic growth, but helps to change people’s perspective on the city.
“It’s about perception. People’s perceptions change when they go to a Lynn show, they have a burger at R.F O’Sullivan’s, and they enjoy a night on the town in Lynn,” Marsh said. “It’s not about the price of the ticket for me. It’s really about the community.”
