Film Convention Deemed a Success : Santa Monica: The event helped bolster the economy, but did little for businesses outside downtown. Another is planned in October.

Despite a rainy and gloomy start to the American Film Market, the nine-day convention headquartered at Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel apparently came through with a much-needed shower of riches on the local economy and city coffers.

However, the riches apparently were not spread as widely as some businesses had expected, particularly in the business district along Main Street.

Beverly Moore, executive director of the Santa Monica Convention and Visitors Bureau, said it was too early to fully assess the impact of the convention, but she acknowledged that areas outside of downtown Santa Monica may not have benefited much.

Still, she said, the AFM allowed the city to achieve its primary goals of filling as many of the city’s hotels and motels without significantly affecting residents, and showing that Santa Monica can organize conventions of this size. The film market convention drew about 9,000 participants.

“Word is out that Santa Monica can handle this kind of conference,” said Moore, who headed a task force composed of city, hotel and market officials that had been meeting for two years to work out such issues as parking, transportation, hotel rooms and security.

“All the principles involved in the planning of this conference can be transferred to other conferences. This was a good dry run.”

A second market, which is essentially a business meeting without the glitz of a film festival, is scheduled for Oct. 21 to 27.

“No question that our job will be easier in October,” Moore said. “The network is in place.”

Tim Kittleson, executive director of the American Film Market Assn., said he was pleased with city and hotel services, despite an opening day in which there were power outages, telephone problems and a leaky roof at the Loews.

“The participants were delighted with the more intimate feeling in Santa Monica,” Kittleson said. “The city was so wonderful to us, and the hotel people performed beautifully.”

Loews had removed all its beds and put in desks and extra tele phones to convert its hotel into a luxury office building for the nearly 300 independent film companies looking to sell their products for foreign distribution from Feb. 28 to March 8.

Misti Kerns, director of catering and convention services for Loews, blamed the power outages on participants bringing in coffee makers and microwave ovens, although they were told not to. She said that although individually the appliances do not use up much power, combined they caused power lines to overload.

Kerns said the phone problems occurred because some companies had not paid their deposits in advance. The telephone company had set up an additional trunk to handle up to 900 new telephone lines, but pulled back some of the capacity when the deposits were not made. The result was a lot of busy signals during the first few days.

The leaks in the glass roof over the hotel lobby atrium still have not been fixed because of continuing litigation with the contractor over responsibility for paying for the repairs, Kerns said. Although participants had to walk around buckets collecting rainwater, there were no problems caused by the leaks.

Kerns said the hotel was back in the lodging business last Saturday, when about 100 guests checked in for the night.

City officials were looking forward to the revenue that a successful conference would generate. The city collects 12% of all hotel and motel room rates, 1% of the 6.75% county sales tax and a 9.5% utility tax on all long-distance telephone calls outside the state.

With an expected $10 million to $15 million spent by the more than 9,000 participants in the market, city officials are hoping to collect more than $600,000.

Exact numbers are not yet available, but it appears most hotels did well, as did businesses that made special efforts to attract market participants.

“It turned out to be everything and more than we expected,” said Dennis Fitzpatrick, director of marketing for the Guest Quarters Suite Hotel. “Our biggest problem was keeping up with the cappuccino demand in the morning.”

“It was fabulous,” said Michael McCarty, owner of Michael’s restaurant on 3rd Street near Wilshire Boulevard. “We had a healthy 10% to 15% increase in business because of the market.”

But other businesses did not seem to do as well.

“We did not get one single bit of additional business,” said Mark Frost, manager of the Broadway Bar and Grill on 3rd Street and Broadway.

“I didn’t notice any additional business,” said Ernest Lepore, an owner and the chef at Bravo Cucina, a restaurant on the Third Street Promenade near Arizona Avenue. “I was very disappointed. I was expecting a lot more business.”

Greg Giummarra, manager of Teasers, a restaurant and dance club on the Third Street Promenade near Santa Monica Boulevard, said he saw a significant increase in business. However, much of it was attributable to about $4,000 in “Teaser Dollars” given by Loews to its guests. Giummarra said the hotel paid for the coupons, which could be exchanged for food and drinks at the restaurant.

Susan Cerny, marketing director of Fifth Av. nightclub on Santa Monica Boulevard and a member of the market task force, said her club held a special party for participants during the first weekend of the conference and saw some increase in business.

Russell Barnard, owner of The Tavern on Main restaurant, said there was little business on Main Street attributed to the market. But he, too, said businesses should be patient about the long-term benefits of the market.

“As time goes on, after AFM is here for a while, the benefits will spread out to other areas,” said Barnard, another member of the task force. “There was no real downside to this. We have to remember that 10,000 people came to this city for a convention and we absorbed them easily.”