Attendees at events at the three venues operated by the Spokane Public Facilities District accounted for nearly $116 million in direct spending in the 12 months ended Jan. 31, 2010, a new study says.

The people who attended the events at the Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena, the Spokane Convention Center, and the INB Performing Arts Center spent $31.9 million on tickets, $31.7 million on food and drinks, $21.7 million on lodging, $14 million on transportation, $13.7 million on retail shopping, and $2.8 million that went to the PFD, says the study.

The study, done by the Eastern Washington University Institute for Public Policy and Economic Analysis, is the first evaluation of the broad economic effects of the PFD's operations since it took over ownership and operation of the INB Performing Arts Center and guided the construction of the Group Health Exhibit Hall, which is part of the Spokane Convention Center.

The PFD worked closely with Patrick Jones, the institute's executive director, to make sure the study captured such things as the pay that ushers and others receive during events, PFD Chairman Larry Soehren says.

"We got pretty engaged in making sure that we mined all the nuggets," Soehren says.

"It's good to have it done," says Kevin Twohig, executive director of the PFD. Some $63 million of the direct spending is new money for the Spokane economy, and that activity led to an economic "contribution" of $110 million in spending by local residents at activities on the PFD premises, which it called "existing dollars," leading to total economic output of $173 million, the study found.

The study can help the PFD explain to the public why it wants to do such things as expand the Group Health Exhibit Hall to the number of seats and amount of meeting space anticipated before high materials costs forced it to cut back on the original project, Twohig says.

Of the $116 million in direct spending, some $24.5 million involved outlays made by local residents who said in surveys they weren't willing to travel elsewhere to attend regional or national events, while $7.3 million involved spending by attendees at purely local events.

Another $47.2 million in direct spending came from event attendees who don't live in Spokane County, and $36.8 million was spent by local residents who said they were willing to travel elsewhere to attend events if they hadn't been held here. Those amounts reflected money that either was brought into the economy by nonresidents or that didn't "leak" out of it when residents went elsewhere for events, says Jones.

The study says the latter two chunks of spending led to 1,411 jobs here, with total labor income of $38.9 million, and a total of $63 million of "value added," or new money in the economy.

"These are not small sums," the study says. "However, as a share of the advanced estimate 2009 total earnings by place of work by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, total labor income attributed to PFD activities is a little more than 0.4 percent of the Spokane private economy."

Data obtained from the out-of-county residents and those who would travel elsewhere to attend regional and national events were gathered in "intercept surveys" conducted by Strategic Research Associates, of Spokane, which posed a set of questions to attendees at seven events. The events included the Lion King, the Nutcracker, the National Veteran Wheelchair Games, the Spirit Convention, and Disney on Ice, the Keith Urban concert, and the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

Information gathered from those attendees then was applied to crowds that attended a total of 140 events at the three venues, with staff members from the PFD and from the EWU research unit matching up the characteristics of the crowds at the seven events where the surveys were done with the types of crowds at those other events.

Attendees from out of the county who attended the skating championships had an average of 2.33 people in their party, and their party spent an average of $1,764 during their stay, the study says. County residents who said they would have traveled elsewhere to attend the skating championships had an average of 1.74 people in their party, which spent an average of $686.

The skating championships generated 77,000 "attendee days," 478 jobs, and $20.9 million of new spending in the economy, the study says. The Lion King generated 58,000 attendee days, with 57 percent of that attendance by people who don't reside in the county, and some $4.1 million in labor income and 161 jobs.