Greenway Sets Attendance Record in 2015!
By Jesse Brackenbury, Greenway Conservancy Executive Director
It’s finally winter and our staff are currently evaluating 2016 food truck submissions and event proposals, but let’s look back for a moment to celebrate last year’s record 1.19 million Greenway visitors! These 1.19M Greenway visitors are the ones we can easily count – millions more visitors run through the fountains, lounge on the lawns, enjoy the public art, or walk through the gardens.
The Mobile Eats Program brought 635,000 visitors to The Greenway. Each year we’ve increased the number of food trucks, trikes, and carts we work with, and their customer count reports also show that per-vendor patronage continues to increase. Our vendors continue to expand their small businesses; this year we saw Stoked Pizza and the Coffee Trike open brick-and-mortar locations and others like Bon Me continue to expand.
Attendance continued to climb for the 300 free events we host annually. The best-attended events were the Boston Local Food Fest, FIGMENT, and Theo Jansen’s Strandbeests. Event series like the Boston Public Market at Dewey Square Park, the Greenway Open Market, and the Boston Calling Block Parties were also extremely popular.
The Greenway Carousel at The Tiffany & Co. Foundation Grove saw its highest ticket sales ever, with 115,744 paid riders. Plus, the Highland Street Foundation again sponsored a Free Fun Friday at the Greenway Carousel. We also set a monthly attendance record, with 27K paid riders in August, topping the 26K in the September 2013 opening month. The Carousel reopens in late March and 2016 birthday parties can be booked now!
Log-ons to our free Wi-Fi network were down as we made a complete system upgrade. During the summer, the original 2010 technology experienced network outages. In September 2015, we relaunched the new, free, carrier-grade network.
Overall, it was a fantastic year and we’ve got a great slate of events and public art planned for 2016! Enjoy the winter, and get out there and make some #GreenwayWinter memories!
The Greenway experienced a record number of trackable visits in 2015.