Covid-19 may have caused a precipitous decline in convention crowds in 2020, but it did not halt long-range plans to overhaul and expand convention centers in a number of key U.S. cities. Today that foresight is bearing fruit with grand new facilities able to host larger industry and trade gatherings than ever before.
“[The pandemic] was eye-opening for a lot of civic leaders as to how important convention center business is to the life of their cities,” says Rob Svedberg, principal of the Atlanta-based design firm TVS and leader of the firm’s public assembly practice. “No industry was more impacted than the hospitality industry. When meetings stopped happening, a significant amount of jobs and economic activity driven by the downtown hotel districts ceased to exist.”
Now convention attendance in the United States is again on the rise, up more than 15 percent in 2023 compared to the year before, according to Center for Exhibition Industry Research. “People were living on Zoom during the pandemic,” says Svedberg, and with the rise of remote work, many still are. “It’s all the more important that, once or twice a year, they can get out and go to events and socialize. The convention center is fulfilling a social function that used to happen in the office.”
As convention center owners revitalize aging structures and build out spaces to stay competitive, they are increasingly embracing the urban environments around them. Renovations and expansions are fueling public-private partnerships, hotel construction, co-development deals, parking and transit options, and additional open public spaces.
“What drives people to want to come to events is to be in a city,” Svedberg says. “They want to get a flavor of what it’s like to live in that city, and they want hotels and restaurants right outside the gate.”
Opened in 2023, the Summit, a sister facility to the Seattle Convention Center’s existing complex, doubles the existing square footage available and stacks floors vertically to fit a tight urban site. The Hillclimb, a glass-enclosed atrium stair, doubles as a tiered gathering space with views of the city skyline.
Courtesy of Adam Hunter
Seattle Convention Center
In the early 2010s, Seattle Convention Center in Seattle, Washington, began considering adding additional facilities.
“Seattle was turning away more convention center business than we booked due to lack of date availability,” says Jennifer LeMaster, president and chief executive officer for Seattle Convention Center. “Maximizing group business to contribute to increased occupancy and economic growth for the city was dependent on adding more space.”
Although other sites were considered, the convention center leadership quickly decided to find another downtown site, one within walking distance of the existing facility. Assembling the site included acquiring the King County Metro Convention Place Station, which offered access to the transit tunnel through downtown, plus air rights over a section of Interstate 5, as well as portions of adjacent streets and alleys.
The design team, made up of local firms led by LMN Architects, stacked the new structure—dubbed the Summit—on six levels, cantilevering a portion over the freeway. Located a block and a half from the Arch, the Summit nearly doubles the convention center’s capacity, adding 574,000 square feet (53,300 sq m) that includes meeting rooms, a ballroom, 250,000 square feet (23,200 sq m) of exhibit space, and an outdoor garden terrace. The Hillclimb, a glass-enclosed atrium stair, serves as a tiered gathering space with views of Seattle’s skyline. Ground-floor spaces are earmarked for local retailers.
As part of the project, the convention center provided $93 million in community benefits: affordable housing, bicycle and pedestrian improvements, public artwork, and lighting of adjacent historic buildings.
Financing for the project came from hotel lodging taxes, bond revenue proceeds, and the convention center’s cash reserves. The downtown site also created opportunities for co-development projects to provide additional funds and enhance the neighborhood.
“One of our goals was to push the large, heavy-load exhibit hall below grade, which required below-street and alley vacations,” says Matt Rosauer, managing partner of local developer Pine Street Group, which served as development manager for the expansion. This strategy allowed the above-ground building to have a smaller footprint than the exhibit hall and loading dock below, creating adjacent parcels for other developments.
One parcel was sold to Hudson Pacific Properties for development of an office building, and a smaller parcel is intended to become a residential building, also developed by a third party. “This allowed us to utilize the convention center’s parking garage for all three uses, navigating the peak periods for each use and taking advantage of a shared asset,” Rosauer adds.
The Summit opened in early 2023. “Conventions that were starting to outgrow the Arch now have more options for how to use the space,” says Peter Andersen, senior director of convention strategy for the Seattle Convention Center and Visit Seattle.
The new facility has also allowed the convention center to attract larger events. “Opening Summit has proven to be beneficial in many ways, including the flexibility to have two groups at one time, or one group moving into one building while another event wraps up in the other building,” LeMaster says. “Often, Summit and Arch work in tandem for even larger events, resulting in increased visitation downtown.”
Cincinnati Convention Center
For 20 years, the private nonprofit Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC) has been actively revitalizing Cincinnati, Ohio’s once-blighted central business district and the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood with refurbished public spaces and hundreds of additional apartments and offices. When it came time to modernize the aging Cincinnati Convention Center, the city and Hamilton County selected 3CDC to serve as development manager. The building’s central downtown location allowed developers to take advantage of an existing parking garage and a planned convention headquarters hotel, while also adding more open spaces for the public.
Opposite the convention center on Elm Street, the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority purchased the aging 1960’s Millennium Hotel for the creation of Elm Street Plaza, a two-acre (0.8 ha) public park and outdoor convention space that is now under construction. When completed it will be available for conventioneers as well as programmed public events.
“We could have built a hotel on that site,” says Katie Westbrook, vice president of development for 3CDC. “But we were trying to give the space a positive use while preserving the ability for the convention center to be expanded eastward in the future.”
The project relies primarily on the local transient occupancy tax that the city and the county both charge. “Both parties have pledged a large portion of [their proceeds from the tax] to back a public issuance of bonds to finance the renovation,” Westbrook says. The county increased its occupancy tax by one percent to help pay for renovations.
In addition, both Hamilton County and the city have made direct capital contributions to the project: approximately $30 million from the city and $15 million from the county. “The city put some of their capital up during pre-development so that we could advance design,” Westbrook says. “That was instrumental in ensuring that the projects could actually start construction now, instead of waiting 10 years.”
Across Fifth Street to the south is a surface parking lot where 3CDC plans to add a new hotel to serve as convention headquarters, with Portman Holdings of Atlanta as the developer. With schematic designs recently completed, Westbrook says the goal is to get city council and county commission approval in early 2025.
The hotel will include up to 800 rooms, flexible meeting spaces, ballrooms, and retail space. A sky bridge would link the convention center to the hotel and adjacent Whex parking garage. “We worked with the Port Authority, the state of Ohio, and the city and county to purchase the Whex garage [in order] to provide parking for the hotel so that structure didn’t need to incorporate its own parking facilities,” Westbrook says.
Construction for the convention center renovation kicked off earlier this year. The local office of Moody Nolan and Atlanta-based TVS are the designers, equipping the building with a new glass façade, updating and extending exhibit hall space, upgrading meeting rooms and ballrooms, and refurbishing building systems and technology to increase energy efficiency.
Las Vegas Convention Center
The opening of the Las Vegas Convention Center’s West Hall expansion in 2021 coincided with significant new development on the Las Vegas Strip in the surrounding area. Resorts World Las Vegas opened in 2021 with 3,500 rooms and 250,000 square feet (23,200 sq m) of meeting and banquet space. The Fontainebleau Las Vegas hotel opened next door to the convention center in 2023, adding another 3,600 rooms and more than 550,000 square feet (51,100 sq m) of meeting spaces. “Those projects, although not entirely driven by proximity to the convention center, have certainly created a symbiotic relationship with what we do here on our campus,” says Brian Yost, chief operating officer for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA). “The area is becoming reinvigorated.”
To help fund a $600 million renovation intended to give the rest of the convention center the same level of technology, customer experience, and architectural design as the West Hall, the LVCVA is selling 10 acres (4.0 ha) of adjacent land that had once been home to the Riviera Hotel-Casino.
“Those 10 acres were far more valuable as an asset than as a part of the convention center campus,” Yost says. “We are now very close to closing on a sale of those 10 acres, which [will be developed into] a mixed-use retail, dining, and entertainment complex.” The Clark County zoning commission recently approved permits for the project to include two 44-story towers—one residential, one hotel—as well as an amusement ride, theater, and shopping center.
Designed by TVS, West Hall includes a distinctive circulation “ribbon” with a wavy roof on the facility’s exterior; the renovation, also by TVS, will extend the ribbon to the legacy campus to create continuity.
The scale of the campus and the desert climate meant that walking from one corner of the site to the opposite one could be challenging. “So the LVCVA issued a request for proposals for what we were calling a people mover,” Yost says. “The respondents were proposing everything from an elevated roadway to elevated fixed-rail transportation to a ski gondola system, but the most interesting and least costly [idea] was The Boring Company’s proposed underground tunnels.”
The Vegas Loop at the Las Vegas Convention Center opened in 2021 with three stations on the convention center campus. The system has since added a spur connecting the convention center to Resorts World, and the city has approved another expansion.
“The expectation is that The Boring Company will be digging 68 miles [109 km] of tunnels [that] will eventually link the convention center to downtown Las Vegas’s Fremont Street area and the airport,” Yost says. “There will be about 104 stops that include all the major resorts, and potentially the University of Nevada Las Vegas campus and Allegiant stadium. The purpose is to provide a very efficient transportation system that is relatively cost efficient for the user and removes cars from the street.”
Colorado Convention Center
In the 1980s, Denver’s leaders enlisted a ULI Advisory Services Panel to evaluate five competing proposals for a new convention center to replace the city’s aging Currigan Exhibition Hall, built in the late 1960s. In order to support the central business district, the ULI panel advised placing the new facility adjacent to Currigan Hall so it could take advantage of the existing transit systems, downtown hotels, cultural sites, restaurants, and the 16th Street pedestrian mall. The panel also believed this site offered the best opportunity to revitalize the surrounding area, which was struggling with blight at the time.
The new convention center opened in 1990, and in 1999, voters approved plans to double its size. The 2004 expansion added a light rail station on the Currigan Hall site. Fentress Architects, a local firm, redesigned the convention center’s new exterior with a glazed façade and reinforced the roof to allow for future expansions.
A second major expansion, approved by voters in 2015, was completed in late 2023, adding 80,000 square feet (7,430 sq m) atop the building to serve as a flexible ballroom. Capable of hosting more than 7,000 attendees for general sessions, it can also be divided into 19 smaller meeting rooms. The expansion, designed by TVS and Hensel Phelps of Greeley, Colorado, also included a 35,000-square-foot (3,252 sq m) concourse and networking space with floor-to-ceiling windows. An outdoor rooftop terrace offers views of the city skyline and the Rocky Mountains.
These additions have greatly increased the center’s capacity to host multiple events. Richard Scharf, president and CEO of Visit Denver, credits foresight in 1999 for making the recent expansion possible: “We were very fortunate that city leaders decided to reinforce the building back then, allowing us to expand upward when needed.” Without those preparations, he notes, the project might have been cost-prohibitive, given the rise in construction expenses over the years.
Scharf also highlights the value of the ULI panel’s recommendation to locate the convention center downtown: “When different city leaders support competing sites, it’s helpful to have an objective third party guiding the process,” he says. Today, there are more than 13,000 hotel rooms within walking distance of the center. Next door, the Denver Performing Arts Complex offers 10 theaters, 10,000 seats, and an outdoor atrium. “We’ve hosted events with [up to] 8,000 people there,” Scharf says. The complex includes Sculpture Park, a 7,000-person capacity outdoor venue. “The current trend in convention centers is creating a convention and cultural campus-like atmosphere, and that’s exactly what we have here.”
