New and Expanding: Space Still Planned, but Delayed

By Rachelle Crum -- Tradeshow Week, 2/13/2006

The bandwagon is getting crowded — but it's moving more slowly than expected.

According to Tradeshow Week's Update on New and Expanding Venues, construction projects are cropping up in every corner of the United States, from Jackson, Miss., to Pasadena, Calif., and Anchorage, Alaska.

Here's a breakdown of our findings:

• A total of 70 venues, both new (29) and expanding (41), are included in this update.
• New exhibit space for the 70 venues amounts to approximately 8.2 million square feet, 3.7 million of which is slated for new venues. The remainder, nearly 4.5 million sq. ft., is planned for expanding venues.
• Twenty-nine venues (10 new and 19 expanding) are currently in pre-construction phases.
• Ten new venues with exhibit space and 19 expansions at existing centers are currently under construction.
• Twelve facilities have opened in the last five months, nine of which were new venues.

Since TSW's last venue report in September, completion dates have fluctuated.

One venue, McCormick Place West, is scheduled to open its new 470,000 sq. ft. of exhibit space eight months ahead of schedule. The target date for the new Project CityCenter in Las Vegas has moved up from 2010 to late 2009. Also, the expanding Phoenix Convention Center is expected to open one month earlier than originally projected.

However, the target dates for other large-scale venue expansions have been pushed back by months, even years.

The Las Vegas Convention Center expansion in TSW's last report was projected to be completed by late 2009; now it's 2010. New York's Jacob K. Javits Convention Center expansion, most recently expected to be completed as early as 2008 or 2009, is targeted for completion in 2010. Philadelphia's Pennsylvania Convention Center expansion is now expected to open in mid-2009, not December 2008 as noted in our September report.

Smaller centers that will open their space later than expected include the Pasadena Conference Center and the Anchorage Civic & Convention Center.

In our September report, the Pasadena project was in the design planning phase — and it still is. Although the space was previously expected to open by May 2008, James Canfield, executive director of the venue, said he pushed the opening projection to late 2008 because "sometimes it takes a while to get legs under these things."

The center is projected to expand its exhibit space from 65,000 to 91,000 sq. ft., with groundbreaking scheduled for mid-April of this year.

The opening of the new Anchorage center has changed, from fall 2008 to spring 2009. But the postponement hasn't dampened the city's enthusiasm for the center, Anchorage Convention & Visitors Bureau spokeswoman Laura Tanis said.

Tanis said the new venue, with 50,000 sq. ft. of exhibit space, was at one point a difficult sell for Anchorage residents. But once they understood that the funding would come from a 4-percent bed tax increase, and not out of their pockets, they were more eager to listen.

"Once they understood it, people were really in favor of it," Tanis said.

The center will be attached to two other venues, the William A. Egan Civic & Convention Center (with 40,000 sq. ft. of exhibit space) and the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts.

All three facilities are located in the heart of downtown Anchorage, within walking distance of more than 3,000 hotel rooms, restaurants, an 11-block-long park, and the Anchorage Museum of History and Art.

Their partnership will further the venues' combined appeal to shows and meetings with 1,500 to 5,000 participants, Tanis said. The Aerospace Medical Assn. Annual Scientific Meeting is the first meeting booked for the new configuration. The meeting, which took place in Anchorage in 2004, will travel to Orlando, New Orleans, Boston and Los Angeles before returning to Anchorage in 2011. The show is expected to draw 1,600 participants.

Another city planning to pair up its venues is Jackson, Miss. When its new Capital City Convention Center opens in fall 2008, it will connect to the Mississippi TelCom Center, which opened last month. Together, the venues are expected to offer approximately 110,000 sq. ft. of exhibit space.

Also in Mississippi, the Mississippi Coast Coliseum & Convention Center in Biloxi is moving ahead with its plans to expand — despite the venue's extensive damage by Hurricane Katrina. The expansion is expected to be finished by late 2008, instead of February of that year as previously projected.

Meanwhile, New Orleans' Ernest N. Morial Convention Center will continue with its expansion, from 1.1 million to 1.6 million net sq. ft., but its completion date is tentatively late 2009, instead of the original January 2009 target date.