ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The CGI Rochester International Jazz Festival is now underway, with more than a dozen venues across downtown Rochester. While the big stages may be the main attraction, some performance spaces are offering a more intimate experience for festival-goers.

The Duke and The Inn on Broadway have been involved in Jazz Fest before, but this year it’s extra special.

“Tonight’s our first event; we just opened up. It’s in a catering event space and tonight is the first show for the Jazz Fest,” said Ken Greene, director of commercial development at Sibley Square, where The Duke is located.

“The musicians will perform here — they’ll do two shows a night and then they will stay upstairs in one of our 25 rooms,” said Evie Bickel, hotel manager at The Inn on Broadway.

Both venues will host intimate performances each night of the festival, and with that comes increased business.

“Tonight 150 to 300 people will be lining up in the Mercantile on Main for the 7 o’clock show waiting to get in, and all the restaurants and bar will be open within the Mercantile so people can be eating and drinking as they’re waiting to come in as they’re standing in line,” Greene said.

The venues are already seeing an economic impact from the festival.

“There are people who booked for this a long time ago,” Bickel said.

“I’m already hearing from the restaurant operators this week that they’re seeing more and more people that they haven’t seen before coming in for lunches,” Greene added.

While the fest may have brought people to these venues initially, they hope it’s only the start of increased business.

“They go ‘Oh wow, this room is really beautiful. My daughter is getting married in the spring and she’s looking for somewhere to have her wedding’ — and then we end up kind of driving business that way,” Bickel said.

“I mean most of them have never seen the opportunity here and all the sudden now they think about. ‘Hey, where can I go for lunch? Where can I go out for dinner? Where can I go for cocktails?’ and all the sudden the restaurants in the marketplace will have an opportunity to expose really the wonderful things that they do,” Greene said.

The performances at the Inn on Broadway and The Duke are part of the Jazz Fest Club Pass. Both venues are excited to be indoor venues for the festival and hope it’s only the beginning of a busy season.

The venues hosting shows aren’t the only ones benefiting from the festival. Since it began in 2002, the festival has generated a $200 million economic impact.

Rochester Contemporary Art Center on East Avenue is one local business that feels the impact of the fest. Its summer exhibition lines up with the dates of the feat each year.

RCAC Executive Director Bleu Cease says the Jazz Festival is always one of the center’s biggest weeks.

“We typically see over 1,000 visitors during this week, and we usually sell over 1,000 artworks too.
Its a terrific week for us; we see a lot of visitors from around the country during this time and around the region during this week,” Cease said.

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