AUDIO TRANSCRIPT: Winterfest boosts business for downtown Syracuse
Alexa Korrie: The winter season is typically slow for restaurants. Including two that are located inside the Downtown Syracuse Marriott. The hotel’s Director of Engineering, Aaron Centner, says on one weekend day, the festival brings hundreds of people through the doors.
Aaron Centner: I think they sold 900 tickets for the day, so that’s a lot of people to come through the doors.
Alexa Korrie: Camille Murphy was one of the participants at the Marriott. She says, Winterfest is what finally gets her downtown.
Camille Murphy: I get nervous driving in the city, so anytime that I can come with other people and we can make a big event of it that always ends up being the most fun for me.
Alexa Korrie: And it’s not just residents showing up, President of Winterfest, Bill Cooper, says visitors are traveling long distances.
Bill Cooper: We got a bus load of people from Pennsylvania, southern states come up. I was just talking to a woman that was from California. They come from all over the country.
Alexa Korrie: Organizers say the second weekend of events included a couple hundred more people than the first. Alexa Korrie N-C-C News.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) – While the event is over, the impact of Syracuse Winterfest lingers on. The festival helped boost the local economy during the slowest time of year.
In the wintertime, restaurants and hotels struggle to attract customers. However, events like Winterfest give the city life for 10-days. The festival downtown featured food and drink sampling, ice skating, culinary challenges and fireworks.
People gathered at the Marriott Syracuse Downtown to receive their tickets. Aaron Centner, the director of engineering at the hotel, says events like Winterfest tend to bring visibility to the city’s hidden gems.
“Sometimes people forget about the small businesses and they go to the big chains. It [Winterfest] brings people out to the small businesses, they [people] try the food, and they are like ohh we got to try this again. Let’s go back to them,” Centner said.
The festival brought hundreds of people to local businesses each day. Bill Cooper, the president of winterfest, said over the weekend, they sold out of the eight-hundred tickets that were allotted for the day.
One of the visitors, Camille Murphy, says she only visits downtown if there’s an event.
“I get nervous driving in the city so anytime that I can come with other people and we can make a big event of it, that always ends up being most fun for me,” she said.
Cooper aims to impact the Syracuse area by helping local businesses keep the community active. He says he hopes to restore the city to the way it was when he was a kid.
“There was all kinds of excitement, it was like being in Vegas back in the 50s. Just trying to keep that excitement and charisma going again,” Cooper said.
One way of keeping the excitement up is to attract people from all over, which Cooper managed to do.
“We got a bus load of people from Pennsylvania, and southern states come up. I was just talking to a woman from California,” said Cooper.
While Winterfest wrapped up for 2026, there are similar events in the summertime to help support the Syracuse community.