Stephanie Corbin

Is Bigger the Best?

At convention centers across the country, officials almost always are calling for more space.

Yesterday, I read a column Heywood Sanders wrote in Sunday’s The Tennessean questioning the many convention center officials who promise expansions and new convention centers will be an “economic boon.” And then it doesn’t happen.

We’ve all probably heard of Sanders. He’s with the University of Texas at San Antonio and probably the biggest critic of publicly financed convention centers. He’s been speaking out against them for years.

No wonder he was in Nashville and had a column appear during a time when the city’s looking to build the new Music City Center, which will replace the current Nashville Convention Center.

His column, though, also criticized expansions in Seattle, Philadelphia, San Diego, Dallas, San Antonio, St. Louis, Boston and Austin, Texas.

Granted, I don’t think every city in the United States needs a convention center – Las Cruces, N.M., I’m looking at you – but I don’t think every expansion and new construction should be questioned. San Diego does a roaring convention business and has needed space for years. Philadelphia, likewise. The Phoenix Convention Center opened its expansion about six months ago and has secured dozens of events it didn’t have the space for before.

Sanders wrote in the article, “The actual performance of the convention industry shows no increase in overall attendance since the mid-1990s. Yet the supply of convention center space has boomed, growing by 36 percent over the last decade. The result is a ‘buyer’s market,’ with an increasing number of centers offering discounts and free rent in an effort to secure future meetings.”

I’m not sure where Sanders gets his statistics or even if they’re correct. Yet, in some ways, I guess I agree with his statement that it’s a “buyer’s market.” More convention space does give more power to show producers. Yes, cities will be fighting for their shows and offering incentives to lure shows to their destination.

But some shows have been locked into the same rotation for years – if only because there are so few cities that meet their needs. I wrote a story more than a year ago about the challenges health care shows had finding places to meet.

In most cases, voters in cities decide whether an expansion or new center will happen – or not. They should question that decision and be informed. They should also think about what a center might cost compared to what it could do for their destination economically.

Posted by Stephanie Corbin on June 2, 2009 | Comments (2)