Convention Center Follies. Heywood T. Sanders
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Center would presumably see its annual convention and tradeshow attendance grow from 16,300 to 50,500—a more than threefold increase.36
The demand for more convention center space that would presumably fill an expanded Javits Center, a larger Indiana Convention Center, a new center in Irving, and an expansion of the Gwinnett Center would also be sufficient to neatly accommodate an expansion of the San Diego Convention Center. PWC’s December 2007 208-page “Strategic Plan Update” and expansion analysis for the San Diego Convention Center focused on a “building program … to accommodate the current and estimated future demand for the SDCC.” As it had been for clients since the mid-1990s, the firm’s assessment of demand was based in large part on both historic “200” and “Gateway Center” performance.
For the “200” large convention and tradeshow events, the PriceWaterhouseCoopers consulting team now had a few years of data beyond the immediate impact of 9-11. The charts of the total attendance and exhibit space use of the “200” events that had appeared in the two successive studies for the Javits Center were nowhere to be found. Instead there was a set of graphs, based on the annual “200” figures, showing year-to-year percentage change. And PWC’s view of those data was upbeat, saying that growth of the indices “continued in 2005 and 2006, although not nearly as strong as the growth experienced in the mid-1990s.”37
The data on “gateway centers,” defined as centers in metro areas with more than 30,000 hotel rooms and including San Diego with its 53,800 rooms, also provided a view of convention and tradeshow demand. The San Diego report noted these centers saw an average of 53 conventions and tradeshows for 2007, with attendance of about 400,000. In terms of exhibit hall occupancy from those events, PWC said, “Gateway centers have nearly reached their pre-9/11 levels.” Their final oft-repeated conclusion about growth: “Growth and decline in exhibit space demand and attendance at Gateway centers have been consistent with periods of national economic growth and decline—a trend that is expected to continue in the future.” With that expectation, PWC recommended that San Diego add 474,000 square feet of exhibit hall space, almost doubling the center’s size to one million square feet.38
The Logic of Growth
The repeated invocation of convention growth—in event space, attendance, and total number—has been central to the justification for ever more new or expanded convention facilities. By portraying the convention and tradeshow industry as constantly growing, it was possible to simultaneously offer the judgment that Boston, Richmond, Overland Park, Rockford, and Peoria—and Atlanta, New York, Indianapolis, and Irving—could succeed in gaining convention business and “economic impact” by building more space.
The argument that the volume of exhibit space demand was regularly growing (and would do so far into the future) underpinned the contention, repeated in study after study to a wide range of communities, that expanding events, requiring ever more exhibit hall space, would “outgrow” a particular city. That argument was made for small and medium-sized centers, just as it was employed for the biggest centers such as Las Vegas and Chicago. As Charlie Johnson put it to Chicago and Illinois officials: “Many shows in McCormick Place need more space …. These shows, if they can not grow, may choose to leave the City.”39
For individual cities, the threat or reality of losing a long-time event has often been portrayed as a striking blow to civic pride and the community’s sense of economic competitiveness. When the annual meeting of the Future Farmers of America decamped from Kansas City to Louisville, a Kansas City Star editorial was headed “An Emotional Blow,” and one news article described it as “a heavy blow to Kansas City’s convention industry and civic self-esteem.” The New York Times offered the assessment, “But what has made old men here weep and younger ones wonder about loyalty was the news last month that the blue jackets [of the FFA] would be leaving town” after almost seventy years. And when, just a few years later, the Future Farmers relocated their annual gathering from Louisville to Indianapolis, the public gnashing of teeth in Louisville was just as dramatic, followed by the offer of cash or corporate sponsorships and thousands of local volunteers to lure the event back. Even Indianapolis was not immune, with the annual Performance Racing Industry Tradeshow moving its annual event from Indianapolis to Orlando in 2005.40
In a world of growing conventions and tradeshows, more space appeared to be a necessity simply to keep existing business. But simply staying even—keeping the Future Farmers in Kansas City, for example—would represent a very limited return on a substantial public investment in building and operating a center. The second element of the constant growth argument was that attendance was growing in parallel with the demand for space. By portraying consistently growing attendance, consultants could support and justify the forecast that more convention center space—either an expansion or an entirely new facility—would inevitably yield new attendees. More space would enable a community to go upmarket to lure larger and more lucrative events. It is the prospect of more out-of-town attendees, thereby bringing new visitor dollars and “economic impact” while stimulating new private development, that has long provided the central justification for ever more space.41
While an association or a tradeshow producer could profit from simply having more space to offer exhibitors for their booths and displays (thereby boosting his or her rental income), local communities and their governments only realized a return indirectly, through the attendees brought to their community. If bigger events, in terms of exhibit space, yielded no new visitors, the public investment in a new or bigger center would be unproductive. So the image of growing attendance, both at individual events and in total, has been a vital part of the consultants’ analyses and the local sales pitch for convention center spending.
The growth argument rests on a third leg. It has long been a central tenet of industry promoters that the overall universe of convention and tradeshow events has been consistently growing as well. If space demand or attendance were growing, with no enlargement of the pool of events, every city would be facing an effectively “zero-sum” market environment, able to fill its new center or added space only at the expense of competing locales. The image of an expanding universe implied that there would inevitably be new events. From the 1980s through the 1990s and beyond 2000, industry consultants and observers consistently described the constant birthing of new events—to serve new industries and innovations such as the personal computer or the rise of the Internet, to provide regional offshoots of national events, or as targeted events for specialized niche markets.
David C. Petersen, long considered the “dean” of convention center consultants, first at Laventhol & Horwath and then at PriceWaterhouse and PriceWaterhouseCoopers, could tell those assembled for the Exhibit Hall Management Conference in November 1984, “The market is growing as fast as, or faster than, the buildings are growing…. I don’t see anything that’s static or declining. Everything is increasing—size, attendance, number of shows—and sponsors are demanding better and better facilities.”42
Petersen would repeat much the same argument in his 1989 book on convention center development: “While many people are alarmed at the amount of new convention center construction and expansion, it is apparent that the dominant users of these facilities are increasing in number at a pace consistent with the expansion and supply of the facilities.” And Petersen’s successor at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Robert Canton, could point in 2004 to the 4,778 trade and consumer exhibitions counted by Tradeshow Week and tell Javits Center officials that “space limitations have precluded the Center from hosting many events that would like to be in New York City … [giving New York City] tremendous untapped potential in the trade and consumer exhibitions market.”43
The Center for Exhibition Industry Research, the research entity established and funded by the tradeshow industry, also published regular “Size of the Exhibition Industry” reports (based on Tradeshow Week Data Book data) through the 1990s that forecast consistent growth in the number of annual events. The 1996 edition, for example, estimated that the count of annual events would grow from 4,400 in 1996 to almost 4,800 by 2000, together with the contention that “Over 500 new shows will be launched by the end of the decade.” And the overall argument from trade publications was that there was a growing