156: EDA Public Works in RI, 1996-2000 - State of Rhode Island ...

Two studies were performed, in 1992 (years before the theater’s
expansion occurred) and 1996. The first study considered a hypothetical sevenweek
run of Phantom. It predicted a total impact of $7,641,782 from ticket
revenues, performers’ and patrons’ expenses, and local employment. According
to the multipliers generated by the RIMS model, this translates to 312 direct,
indirect and induced jobs ((19)).
The second study assessed actual sales and attendance figures when
Phantom played PPAC for six weeks, the number of performers in the company,
and records of spending by the company. The total impact was $4,493,131
((20)), or 183 direct, indirect and induced jobs by the RIMS multipliers.
To calculate direct jobs only, the number from the second study was
divided by the RIMS direct-effect employment multiplier. The result was 127
jobs. These may be considered new jobs as they result from the staging of
Phantom, which would not have been possible without the theater’s expansion.
This compares to the PPAC estimate in its EDA application of 95 jobs retained
plus 75 jobs added by the expansion, and the original CEDS estimate from the
City of Providence of 20 jobs “stimulated.” In this one case, the completed
project outperformed the CEDS estimate by more than 600 percent.
Assessment
Project solicitations over the years have attracted different numbers of
proposals. During the survey period, the range was 30 (in 1999) to 81 (in 1996).
Every year, the staff determined the median score among the proposals and
used it as a cutoff for that year’s priority list. However, as Part Three of this
paper shows, the projects that were funded by the EDA did not necessarily have
the highest CEDS scores on the list. Moreover, the projects with the highest
CEDS scores did not necessarily turn out to be the highest performing in terms of
jobs and wages. This is shown on Table 10.
Job generation
The numbers of jobs generated from the nine projects in our survey were
lower than expected, given the estimates submitted with the OEDP and CEDS
applications. One explanation may be that most of the applications – six out of
the nine – did not back up their job estimates with documentation. At least one
applicant based his estimate on the anticipated floor space the project would
occupy and a corresponding “industry standard” for the number of employees per
square foot. The actual project footprint turned out smaller than envisioned and
the job estimate exaggerated.
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