The head of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority invited a panel of analysts to poke holes in the authority’s ambitious plans to expand the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in South Boston yesterday.
"This building is doing better than I thought it would, but it’s not anywhere near what was projected," argued Charles Chieppo, a senior fellow at the Pioneer Institute and a former Convention Center Authority board member. "How is it that a building that was projected to book 800,000 room nights a year, and that’s only doing 333,000, is so full that we’re turning people away?"
Convention Center Authority Executive Director Jim Rooney unveiled plans for a massive convention center expansion late last year. A rough development framework released at the time envisioned the development of a new 1,000-room hotel along the South Boston waterfront, as well as the construction of a 75,000-square-foot ballroom, a 5,000-seat auditorium, and upwards of 500,000 square feet of new exhibit and meeting space.
A 27-member committee is now halfway through a year-long assessment of those plans. Rooney said he hosted the roundtable to draw out "tough questions that need to be answered in the final report."
Lisa Petraglia, director of the Economic Development Research Group, a research firm for the convention industry, said the demand to host the industry’s largest trade shows far outstrips the supply of shows: It averages out to roughly one show per facility per year.
Dan O’Connell, the state’s former secretary of economic development, said Boston’s two convention centers can play a significant role in selling Massachusetts as a place to do business. A 2007 biotechnology show at the BCEC led to Gov. Deval Patrick’s 2007 trip to China, O’Connell said, which led to business deals for two Bay State businesses, Vertex and Organogenesis, he added.
Still, O’Connell said, any expansion depends on large-scale hotel development.
"I’m deeply concerned about the pace that hotel rooms have been developed at in this part of the city, and I’m not sure that the city and the state have the resources to do anything about it," he said.
Chieppo noted that St. Louis’s publicly-owned convention hotel is in foreclosure, while convention center expansions in Orlando, Las Vegas and Atlanta have been met by downturns in business.
"You have to look at what the numbers say, and the numbers are bleak," Chieppo said. "Supply of convention space has gone through the roof, and demand has been level, at best."
"If expansion was an easy question, it would’ve been done already," Rooney told Banker & Tradesman. "We’re going to have to come to grips with the fact that, if we determine an expansion is needed, there will have to be some public financing necessary. Without a hotel strategy, there can’t be an expansion strategy."
