Queens Wants a Bigger Cut From U.S. Open Cash Cow

The U.S. Open tennis tournament is a feast of visitor spending that happens over two weeks every year, and Queens businesses are trying to grab a greater share of the economic scraps.

Because even those scraps are substantial: city officials estimate the tournament generates $700 million in economic activity. That's $200 million more than the Super Bowl brought to the area in 2012. 

The challenge is how to motivate tennis fans to treat the Billie Jean King Tennis Center in Flushing less like an airport they zip into and out of, barely glancing left or right, and more like an entryway to the neighborhoods around it.

That's the goal of the Queens Economic Development Corporation, which is constantly trying to coax some of the 700,000 spectators who come to the Open into tossing some of their cash at local merchants. On Wednesday, a trio of fans named Michael, Mary Jane and Camille represented the Platonic Ideal the corporation would like to cultivate: first, the three friends planned to spend the day watching the pros pounding serves and blazing topspin forehands down the line; then they would take their hungry selves to a Chinese restaurant in Flushing.

"We'll have crispy-skin chicken," Michael said of the meal they were already imagining. He started to say more, but Camille blurted out, "They make shrimp all kinds of different ways! You can have it with mayonnaise! It's something that you've probably never had!"

Data is hard to come by on exactly where the tennis-loving hordes spend their money when they're not on the grounds of the tennis center. But it's clear to Seth Bornstein, executive director of The Queens Economic Development Corporation, that more of that money has been going to Queens hotels, if only because more hotels have recently been built.

"It seems like we have new hotels opening every couple of hours," he said. "Ten years ago, there were maybe five hotels in Queens you'd stay in. Now there's a hundred hotels." 

Bornstein says another boost came four years ago when the Corporation opened an informational kiosk at the tennis center during the tournament. It's staffed by Rob MacKay, who says those attending the U.S. Open book about 300,000 overnight stays in New York.

"Some of them will get a room in Manhattan," he said. "But our hotels are about $150 cheaper a night." MacKay does everything he can to press that point on visitors in hopes of luring them to the Queens side of the East River. "It's always kind of a pleasure to steal a hotel stay from Manhattan," he said.

Still, most of the people who stream toward the 7 train at the end of each day's afternoon session turn west toward Manhattan, not east toward the crispy chicken.  

Jonathan Bowles of the Center for an Urban Future has written about the problem. He says one thing the tennis center could do is use their Jumbotrons to promote local tourism. "You know, at least one public service announcement every night about the neighborhood," he said.

And he'd like to see a Flushing app that would help visitors navigate the neighborhood once they get there. MacKay said the Queens Development Corporation is working on such on app with the goal of releasing it next year. "But we've got work to do," he said.