One Down ... One to Go

First phase of Salt Palace CC expansion opens on time for Outdoor Retailer

By Heidi Genoist -- Tradeshow Week, 8/22/2005

Salt Lake City—The hard part is over; now the really hard part can begin.

That's what Salt Lake Convention & Visitors Bureau management and the SMG team that runs the Salt Palace Convention Center were thinking when VNU Expositions' Outdoor Retailer Summer Market opened Aug. 11 — on time.

The opening of the trade-show for manufacturers and sellers of outdoor activity gear marked an important milestone in an unprecedented race to complete a convention center expansion in a mere 22 months — from initial proposal to grand opening — in order to keep a major client from leaving town.

And the rain that has bedeviled the project all spring persisted until 4:30 a.m. on the first day of the show, giving organizers yet another opportunity to test their planning and teamwork.

The semiannual OR has outgrown Salt Palace and accumulated a waiting list of hundreds of prospective exhibiting companies. To accommodate the business that shows no signs of cooling off, VNU last year considered moving the show elsewhere. Denver and Las Vegas were said to have been top contenders.

But when the outdoor industry voiced its support for Salt Lake, and the facility snapped to the ready with a proposal to add 215,000 square feet of meeting and exhibit space, VNU gave Salt Lake and SMG until the summer 2006 show to complete the expansion.

If they can accomplish the feat, OR will stay at Salt Palace through at least 2009, generating an annual economic impact of $32 million for the city and county.

SMG worked with public officials and the show's producers to come up with a plan. It involved splitting the expansion into two phases, with the first to be done by this year's OR Summer Market and the second by next year's. The '06 Winter Market will take place amid Phase II construction.

Phase I consisted of excavating the lot to the west of the existing Exhibit Hall 4, building an underground, 400-space parking lot in its place and topping it with a 130,000 sq. ft. concrete slab that eventually will be the floor of a new Exhibit Hall 5.

On the slab, Premier Event Group put up three tents that, at the Aug. 11–14 OR, accommodated 477 booths.

Besides completing Hall 5, the second phase of the expansion will involve razing and/or renovating Salt Palace's existing north lobby and meeting rooms, in order to add a concourse between the exhibit halls and meeting rooms, as well as a flexible, three-story conference space.

Show Director Andy Tompkins estimated the full expansion would allow OR — which this summer attracted about 20,000 total attendees to visit 925 exhibitors occupying 348,600 net sq. ft. of space — to grow to nearly 400,000 net sq. ft.

"This city has been a great partner to us," Tompkins said. "It's amazing how fast they're producing this expansion."

Even in a normal time frame, other convention center construction projects might have collapsed under the challenges faced by Salt Lake City.

For starters, there was the trick of designing a financing plan and obtaining public approval for the $58 million project. Salt Palace (along with most of the state's hotels) is in a city dominated by Democrats, but is owned by the more conservative Salt Lake County and funded by taxes from the state of Utah, whose legislature is under Republican Party control.

Legislators argued about how to raise and distribute the taxes, with the majority looking for ways to give as little as possible to the more liberal Salt Lake.

In the end, while construction crews broke ground and deadlines for ordering materials loomed, public funding approval came down to a late-night vote at a special legislative session.

Although it passed, the controversy continues, with the mayor of nearby Sandy, Utah, now seeking to use some of the approved funds (earmarked for a parking lot at the SMG-managed public-show facility, South Town Expo Center) for a soccer stadium instead.

Then there was the weather — an unheard-of 18 inches between Jan. 1 and June 30, just four days before the last of the concrete was to be poured. Allyson Jackson, general manager of the SMG-managed Salt Palace, said she lost plenty of sleep this spring wondering whether cement would dry in time for PEG to start erecting its tents July 8.

"We've gotten really creative," said Jackson, describing SMG's solutions to dealing with obstacles.

One example: a 4-inch concrete curb the team came up with to keep water off the floor under the pavilions on the future Hall 5 slab. Contractors completed the berm (as it's called) in time for the monsoonal rains that came the night of Aug. 2, a week before OR move-in. Unfortunately, the berm wasn't high enough: There was standing water inside the tent the next morning.

While workers used wet vacuums, squeegees and blowers to get rid of the water, Jackson called the city's flood management department. The morning of Aug. 4, 100,000 pounds of sand arrived to place between the berm and the tents' edges. SMG issued an all-hands call and, synchronized like a professional ballet company, team members hauled and placed 2,000 sandbags in less than an hour.

Then, at 4:30 a.m. on Aug. 11, the first day of the show, it rained again.

Said Jackson, "I'd been at a dinner the evening before, and had turned off my cell phone. When I turned it back on, I had five messages."

Fortunately, the sand worked. Water had not seeped into the pavilion floor. It had, however, pooled in outside traffic areas that OR attendees would be walking a few hours later.

Out came the wet vacs, squeegees and blowers again. As crews from GES Exposition Services, OR's general contractor, laid aisle carpet and dropped ramps over the berm at the pavilion's entry points, Jackson and her team whisked away the puddles and leaves the rain had swept in.

Despite all that was going on behind the scenes, show participants remained oblivious. Exhibitors that spoke with Tradeshow Week said they found their booths clean and their freight waiting for them as expected when they arrived. Not one complained of a difficult move-in.

"When does the construction on the new building start?" asked Mary Abrahamsen, tradeshow coordinator for Kiss My Face, located in the pavilion's first tent. Like many, Abrahamsen didn't even realize she was standing on a construction site.

For the bureau and SMG, the fun has just begun. OR tear-down ended Aug. 14. GES estimated the show would be out of the building by the 17th, the day crews were to build a construction fence along South Temple Avenue and start transplanting trees to city parks and community centers in preparation for the demolition of Salt Palace's north lobby and meeting rooms on Aug. 22.

That's also the day President Bush will be in the building for a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention — and the day after huge loads of structural steel begin arriving.

"To say it's nerve-wracking is an understatement," said Jackson, although she added, "I'm going to sleep solid as a rock until about Sept. 8."

Twenty days later, she'll be in Disneyland, celebrating her birthday. Then, it's back to the hard-hat zone.