Quote:
Originally Posted by JAM
Could be. Would be very interesting to see a independent, non-partisan study to confirm. I do know that our condo usually loses money during the event. There is usually extra repairs and other issues that need to be handled due to its presence.
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What would we gain from such a study? Seriously??? That sounds like something an ANTI-SXSW person would say and would do no good except bring out the same people that were talking smack last year that brought about the whole move SXSW to SA crap. SXSW brings far more benefits than negatives. Anybody can see that even people who may not exactly be fond of it can see that.
I agree with BevoLJ in that Austin would not be what it is today without SXSW to even consider a study to basically point out the negatives would just be unproductive and cause a lot of un-needed debate. This city has way too many people who love to debate over mute points as it is to have yet more.
Fact is each year the city hires an independent, non-partisan group to study the impacts of SXSW and each year the numbers are nothing but good news in the amount of tourists, money that comes into the city that is directly impacted from SXSW as well as money that comes indirectly. If you want to take a look at it Ill post the link up.
http://greyhill.com/blog/2011/8/23/2...ct-report.html
And as far as traffic congestion goes, the worst of the traffic is around the Downtown area during the day, area freeways are a little more clogged than usual but then again they are clogged quite a bit these days for any event or non event. By night you can easily drive into downtown. Best way to work around this problem is to take mass transportation, taxi's or ride a bike, or as I did last year had somebody drop me off at the South 1st street bridge and I just walked into Downtown from there. There are ways to get around just got to think outside the box.
And last but not least many companies, especially ones in the Downtown area have found ways to work around SXSW either by having employees work from home in some cases during that time like Hill Country mentioned he will be doing, or to have staggered work hours to keep traffic congestion a bit less than on a typical week day morning or evening. Some companies that don't have anything to do with SXSW let employees have a vacation from work or if they have unused sick time they can use that.