Venue Expansions Approved: Javits, Philadelphia Top Agenda
By Rachelle Crum -- Tradeshow Week, 2/28/2005
The topic of convention center construction has been exhausted in the regional and national media over the past five months. Just type in "convention center" in Google News and you'll come up with dozens of stories about the funding battle between facility officials and local or state governments, or how a new convention center would boost a specific community's tourism revenue.
You may even come across some stories about a January study by the Brookings Institution that shook the industry by contradicting communities' professed desire for convention center construction and expansion.
Nevertheless, according to Tradeshow Week's Update on New and Expanded Venues, the past five months have been a busy period for convention centers. It was during this time that the long-awaited legislative approval and/or funding saw the light of day for major expansions at two East Coast facilities — the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York and Philadelphia's Pennsylvania Convention Center. The Javits will add 340,000 square feet of exhibit space by 2009 and the PCC will add 260,000 sq. ft. to expand to 700,000 sq. ft. of exhibit space by December 2008.
In January, the PCC Authority received the expansion go-ahead from Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell with his initial funding approval of $50 million (of the total $632 million needed).
"This is confirmation that the governor recognizes that we're doing a good job," said Michael Nutter, PCCA board chairman and Philadelphia councilman. The expansion will "take us to the next tier" in the convention center market, he added.
Although the initial funding will be used to raze 22 buildings in the expansion's path over the next few months, an additional $100 million must be approved sometime this summer for the expansion to remain on schedule, Nutter said.
On the West Coast, some highly anticipated facility openings will take place over the next several months, including Las Vegas' World Market Center and Wynn Las Vegas, which will offer 1.3 million and 75,586 sq. ft. of exhibit space, respectively.
The venue report includes a total of 70 facilities — 40 venue expansions and 30 new centers under construction. In the last construction report, 72 facilities were under construction, including 43 expansions and 29 new venues.
The past five months have also seen 10 new facility or expansion openings. Twelve new or expanded centers are expected to open their new spaces during the next five months.
The smallest new facility to open this spring is the Lynnwood (Wash.) Convention Center, with 34,000 sq. ft. of exhibit space. Eddie Tadlock, general manager of the LCC, said the facility construction was necessary to accommodate the 2,500-plus Lynnwood businesses that typically took their meetings to nearby Washington cities like Seattle and Everett.
"There really hasn't been a facility in the area to meet the demands of the marketplace," he said. "There's nothing that can seat more than 300 people in Lynnwood." The LCC will have space for 750-person sit-down dinners and other events.
Like many other U.S. cities these days, Lynnwood has a master plan, as officials work to recreate their community to attract both business and tourists. "The convention center is really the catalyst of the city project," Tadlock added.
Tensile (or nonpermanent) space at convention centers appears to have helped two facilities in attracting and maintaining tradeshow business. While one facility is constructing a tensile space for three upcoming shows, at the other end of the country another may tear down its structure in the course of expansion.
The San Jose (Calif.) McEnery Convention Center will add an additional 80,000 sq. ft. of exhibit space via a tensile structure by June. The space, said Marie Vasquez, the facility's senior marketing manager, is necessary to accommodate the June 23–25 eBay Live! Community Conference and the March 2006 Game Developers Conference & Expo and Embedded Systems Conference. The two 2006 shows are reportedly returning to the facility thanks to the expansion.
The tensile space construction and a three-month, $400,000 renovation to the facility's 22,000 sq. ft. ballroom are included in a $1.4 million project introduced by Team San Jose, the management group that took over the center's operations in July. These changes are the first major renovations to the center since its opening in 1989.
The Javits center, in cooperation with White Plains, N.Y.-based George Little Management, constructed a 54,400 sq. ft. tensile space, the facility's North Pavilion, in 1998 to help alleviate short-term needs for additional exhibit space, especially for several GLM shows, during a period when Javits expansion talks were dragging.
Although the structure will remain intact "until it is no longer needed," said Javits spokesman Mike Eisgrau, he can't believe the space is nonpermanent since "it's in very, very active use. I'm amazed every time that I look at it, because it is a temporary building."
Total new exhibit space in the pipeline for this convention center report amounts to 9,550,986 sq. ft., 1.5 million sq. ft. less than the new and expanded exhibit space listed in the September 2004 report, which had included the mid-2004 grand openings of two new facilities, the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center (at 516,000 sq. ft. of exhibit space) and the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center (400,000 sq. ft.).
