Convention
Center Follies
Heywood T. Sanders
Public Interest, Summer 1998
FROM San Francisco
to Boston, from Chicago to New Orleans, our nation's
major cities have sustained a boom in the
development of convention centers over the last two
decades which is nothing less than remarkable.
Amidst the continuing debate over the scale and role
of the public sector, this one governmental activity
has continued to expand. Though cities like
Baltimore, Atlanta, and St. Louis are marked by
population loss and economic decline, these same
cities and tens of others have devoted millions in
public resources to attract convention goers and
their dollars.
The measure of that
public investment can be seen in the ever-growing
scale of big-city convention centers. In 1960,
Chicago opened its modern lakefront center,
McCormick Place, which totaled 320,000 square feet
of exhibition space. Today, the three buildings of
the McCormick Place complex offer a total of 2.2
million square feet of exhibition space. In 1967,
Atlanta opened its Civic Center convention complex.
Its 70,000 square feet of space once used for
conventions now houses a science museum. Instead,
Atlanta's Georgia World Congress Center boasts
950,000 square feet of exhibition space, with
another 100,000 in the adjacent Georgia Dome and
plans for some 700,000 more square feet of
exhibition space in the near future. In Washington,
D.C., the current convention center opened in 1983.
Containing 380,000 square feet of space, it has been
deemed by local interests to be too small. City
leaders are in the process of developing an entirely
new center with some 750,000 square feet of
exhibition area, at a cost of more than $650
million.
For the nation as a
whole, the space encompassed by big city convention
facilities has boomed over the last two decades. In
1969, major centers covered some 6.5 million net
square feet of space. By 1980, the figure had almost
doubled to just over 11 million. In 1990, the space
total reached 17.7 million. And today, the national
sum stands at about 24 million net square feet.
The building boom
is by no means over. The array of cities building
new centers or expanding existing ones runs from
Boston and Atlantic City to Orlando, Louisville, and
San Antonio, from New Orleans to San Francisco, San
Jose, and Seattle. From booming high-technology
urban centers to traditional tourist destinations or
aging central cities seeking a new economic future,
the enormous convention center has emerged as the
supposed solution to urban ills and the key to
economic transformation.
Yet for all of the
public dollars spent, few cities appear to have been
saved by larger convention centers. For all of the
persistent rhetoric of new jobs, new spending, and
"economic multipliers," much of the
evidence suggests that convention centers deliver
far less than promised. Indeed, in a number of
cases, the expenditure of hundreds of millions of
public dollars appears to have had almost no impact
on individual communities.
Rationales and
promises
Convention-center
development promises visitor dollars, jobs, and
local economic improvement. For communities enduring
job loss or downtown decay, the rhetoric of new jobs
and economic advancement is politically hard to
resist. Moreover, the rhetoric is always bolstered
by a bulky and seemingly substantial
"feasibility study." Produced by a major
national accounting firm or an economic consultant,
these studies provide the rationale for more local
convention-center space and the images of community
benefit. 1
The typical study
begins with an examination of the current local
convention facility and its operation. Business is
usually good. In Atlanta, the Georgia World Congress
Center "has consistently achieved higher annual
professional and tradeshow occupancy than most U.S.
convention centers in gateway cities." San
Antonio's Henry B. Gonzalez Center is
"operating at or near full capacity." So
too the Anaheim Convention Center in California is
"operating at or near full capacity and is
contributing strongly to the economic vitality of
Anaheim visitor industries."
The apparent
success of each of these centers reflects the unique
character and competitive advantage of each city as
a visitor destination. Thus Atlanta's success is
attributable to the city's location, "making it
a natural hub," as well as the "corporate
sector's commitment to community development and the
national and international exposure which CNN and
other Atlanta-based telecommunications companies
provide." If San Antonio lacks a television
network, it still has "appeal as a tourist
destination point," while Anaheim provides an
abundance of hotel rooms at relatively modest rates.
San Francisco is regularly rated by meeting planners
as "the most attractive city in North
America." But, if Washington is tied for sixth
on the same survey, it nonetheless has a
"unique position as the Nation's Capital and as
a gateway city for international visitors."
Even Louisville apparently possesses a set of
advantages, with downtown restaurants, retail, and
entertainment, "creating an attractive and
vibrant urban core."
Yet, if each city
is interesting and vibrant, and each existing
convention center nearly full and successful, what
is the problem? The response of the typical study is
competition-other cities building larger centers
that threaten to steal away convention goers and
visitors. For Atlanta, with one of the largest
centers in the nation, expansions in Chicago, New
Orleans, Washington, and Los Angeles threaten to
leave the city with only "7 percent of the
total exhibition space among the Major U.S. Centers
by the year 2006 if it does not expand."
Washington, D.C., now "lags behind the centers
of the cities with which the District principally
competes," having "fallen from fifteenth
to twenty-fifth nationally in the total amount of
space offered." The competition is no less
serious for San Antonio, where "virtually
all" of its primary convention business
competitors "have either recently expanded, are
in the process of expanding, or have plans to expand
within the next few years."
If the consistent
response to more space in one city is more space in
every other, the natural question should be whether
there is enough convention business to go around.
Each feasibility study contains a remarkably similar
response: The convention and tradeshow business will
inevitably continue to grow, based on the same
national statistics.
The 1993 study for
Washington, D.C., noted that "conventions will
be an essential tool for companies to collect and
disseminate information," concluding that
"convention demand is expected to continue to
grow during the current decade," and that
"trade shows will continue to be an effective
sales medium through the 1990's." Atlanta's
consultants noted predictions of 5 percent annual
growth in demand and concluded that it is
"reasonable to assume that growth in demand for
competitive facilities will continue to be above the
average rate of growth estimated for the
industry." And the Commonwealth of Kentucky
could be reassured that the number of conventions
was "projected to increase between three and
four percent annually" while expositions would
grow at an annual rate of 7 percent. Thus, even in
the face of a convention center building boom and
the constant threat of a city falling behind in the
space race, expanding demand, it was presumed, would
fill up the proposed new space.
Questionable
methods
The methodology of
prediction used in feasibility studies is remarkably
simple and simple-minded. Arthur Anderson's 1991
estimates for San Antonio noted that the existing
center's space could handle some 442,000 attendees.
But it inflated that figure to 728,000 users, based
on a projected 65 percent increase in center space.
There was no estimate of competition, growth rates,
or interest in the city-simply the projection that
any new space would fill up with convention goers in
a few years.
Atlanta's
consultants were less optimistic and more obtuse.
They estimated that a "no expansion"
scenario would see annual convention and trade-show
attendance between 1.1 and 1.2 million, and that a
larger center would accommodate from 1.5 to 1.7
million, although they provided no particular
justification for their conclusions. Washington's
consultants judged that the current center would
manage a stable business over the next decade while
a larger new center would see a 45 percent increase
in annual convention events. In Boston, a convention
center expanded in 1988 was judged to be fully used.
When plans were made for a new 600,000 square foot
center, consultants predicted a half million new
attendees and no reduction of business at the
existing convention facility.
Using these
estimates of hundreds of thousands of new attendees,
the writers of the feasibility studies invariably
forecast impressive economic gains. The typical
mechanism is an elaborate chain of multiplications
which turns visitors into dollars. The projected
number of new annual convention visitors is
multiplied by the presumed average stay, then by the
average daily spending, and finally by a
"multiplier" intended to capture the
economic impact of dollars that are
"re-spent" within the community. In a 1992
study for Louisville, 65,000 new convention visitors
were estimated to stay four days and spend $125 per
day. With additional spending by associations and
convention exhibitors, the total new spending
resulting from the expanded center was judged to be
more than $48 million a year. A multiplier of 1.77
was added in, yielding an economic boon to the
community of more than $86 million.
The economic impact
of a convention-center expansion in San Antonio was
judged to be somewhat greater. An additional 286,000
new attendees, with their 109,000 companions staying
four days, would yield a direct increase of $624
million per year. With a multiplier of 2.0, total
economic effect was predicted to be more than $1.2
billion annually at full capacity.
The economic impact
estimates produced by Deloitte and Touche for a new
center in Washington, D.C., promised about $650
million per year after a few years of operation,
presumably yielding 2,500 new jobs. And in Atlanta,
Price Waterhouse put the economic yield of a
substantial expansion of the Georgia World Congress
Center at $424 million in new direct spending, based
on new attendance of 400,000 to 500,000 persons.
With the effect of a multiplier, the total annual
impact would come to more than $1 billion.
These grand
estimates of economic effect and job creation offer
powerful ammunition for convention-center
proponents. They are, however, subject to a great
many questions. First, each element of the impact
calculation is itself an estimate, often based on
national figures rather than the local experience. A
four-night stay may be the norm in Louisville. But,
in San Francisco or Boston, with far more expensive
hotel rooms, a two- or three-night stay is more
likely the norm. The total number of new attendees
is also subject to question. Is the assumption that
the convention business is continuing to grow
plausible? Or may there be a glut of big-city
convention space in the offing?
Finally, the
estimates of economic impact offer no serious basis
for comparing alternative investments or their
returns. While some studies compare new or expanded
centers to a "no expansion" alternative,
they almost never extend their analysis beyond the
narrow issue of more convention space. Might a few
hundred million dollars of public investment in new
schools or job training produce a more impressive
result? Would similar spending on a museum or arts
complex also be likely to draw in thousands of new
visitors, more spending, and a multiplied economic
effect?
Actual
performance
The promises of
hundreds of thousands of new convention goers and
potentially billions in economic improvement are
tempting to both public officials and the general
public. Yet only rarely are the actual results of
convention-center investment examined. The actual
performance of the new expanded centers has fallen
short of what the feasibility studies promised.
Houston. In the late 1970s, business and political
leaders in Houston feared that their city had fallen
behind in the competition for national
convention-center business. With the Albert Thomas
Convention Center placing the city seventeenth among
the top 20 convention cities, the city commissioned
a feasibility study to examine potential sites and
the likely results of a new building.
The 1981 analysis
by Wilbur Smith and Associates made it clear that
the national convention business was booming and
that Houston needed a far larger facility to serve
it. The consultants recommended that Houston make a
"significant move" into the market by
building a massive new center of 600,000 square
feet. That would position the city just behind
Chicago and New York in the space race and would
generate substantial economic benefits.
Houston's new
George R. Brown Convention Center opened in
September 1987. Smith's 1981 feasibility study had
projected "conservative" annual convention
and tradeshow attendance of 700,000. In 1994, the
center housed 180,687 convention goers; in 1995,
186,576; in 1996, 276,318. The Smith study's
estimate of some 50 to 60 annual convention and
tradeshow events has turned into an annual average
of about 30. With about half the business that the
feasibility study projected, the economic impact of
the center has obviously fallen far short of
predictions. Its job creation results are no less
modest.
In 1987, Harris
County, which includes the city of Houston, listed
15,000 employees in local hotels and motels. The
comparable figure for the most recent year
available, 1995, is 15,499. While the majority of
the 10,000 new jobs promised by the Smith
feasibility study should have been in the lodging
industry, hotel employment has been flat for almost
a decade. City officials and downtown boosters now
argue that the center's failure to attract its
projected business is the result of a lack of nearby
hotel rooms. Armed with special state legislation
that allows sales and liquor taxes to be used to
subsidize a new hotel, the city has embraced a deal
that will provide a $16 million city loan and a $34
million loan backed by hotel taxes as well as a
property tax abatement to spur construction of an
adjacent hotel.
Los Angeles. In
October 1983, the chief administrative officer of
Los Angeles employed Touche Ross & Company to
study the feasibility of expanding the Los Angeles
Convention Center. The firm concluded that an
expansion from 330,000 square feet of exhibition
space to 610,000 would provide an optimum size for
the estimated convention market. Armed with the
Touche Ross endorsement, Mayor Tom Bradley and a
Blue Ribbon Committee enthusiastically backed the
$350 million expansion effort. But the eventual
expansion proved more difficult and expensive than
the mayor and the Blue Ribbon Committee had
anticipated. The cost rose from $350 million to $500
million, and the 385,000 square foot expansion did
not open until November 1993, about three years
late.
In fiscal 1985, the
old center attracted 1.475 million attendees and 123
events. The expanded facility was projected to house
2.32 million attendees in its first year of
operation, rising to more than 3.7 million people
and 270 events. Thus the expansion was projected to
boost attendance two and onehalf times. Here's what
actually happened: Attendance at the expanded Los
Angeles Center in fiscal year 1993-94 came to 1.18
million for 106 events, with 1.3 million attendees
at 129 events the following year. The 1995-96 total
came to 121 events and 1.83 million attendance. (But
more than 400,000 of those attended the 31-day
showing of the "America's Smithsonian"
traveling exhibit.) Rather than boosting attendance
by two and one-half times, the expanded center has
been doing essentially the same level of business as
was done by the old center in the 1980s.
The gap between
promise and performance has had an immediate fiscal
impact on the city. The annual shortfall in debt
service and operating expense for the bigger center
comes to some $20 million. This is paid out of
general city funds that might have been used for
other local public needs.
Washington, D.C.
The effort to build a major convention center in
Washington began in earnest in the early 1970s. City
officials applied to the federal Economic
Development Administration for a study grant in mid
1976 and commissioned Gladstone Associates to
conduct a market analysis and a feasibility study
for a new convention facility. The center was
intended to be an "economic development
project, designed to strengthen and expand
Washington's role as a major convention and meeting
city, and to insure that this vital function is
retained in the heart of the city." Gladstone
endorsed the plans for a convention center,
concluding that it would generate big economic
gains.
The new Washington
Convention Center opened in 1983 and, by the early
1990s, was judged to be operating "at or above
the industry's practical capacity of 75%." The
center was filled, it is true, but with local
events. The out-of-town conventions that were
intended to lure new dollars to the District
amounted to only about one-third of the annual
events at the center. Instead of the approximately
40 conventions and tradeshows projected by
Gladstone, the center hosted 32 in 1993, 25 in 1994,
and 23 in 1995.
Attendance was also
modest. Where Gladstone's feasibility study had
projected attendance of about 350,000, the number of
out-of-town delegates was 303,000 in 1994 and
258,000 in 1995. Fewer convention delegates means
less hotel demand. The feasibility study projected
about 1.5 million hotel-room nights, based on an
average stay of 4.4 nights. From 1987 through 1997,
the Center generated, on average, just 323,000 room
nights per year-about one-fifth the projected total.
Providence. The new
Rhode Island Convention Center not only fits the
pattern of a clear gap between promise and
performance but also exemplifies a new political
trend in convention-center development. Where
big-city centers like those in Houston, Los Angeles,
and San Francisco have typically been the products
of local government, the new center in Providence
was built and paid for by the state of Rhode Island
through the Rhode Island Convention Center
Authority. The authority owns the center, an
adjacent 363-room hotel operated by Westin, and two
parking garages.
The state's plans
for the center were supported by a feasibility study
by Coopers & Lybrand which estimated the
facility would attract 42,000 delegates yearly, each
of whom would stay four nights, for a total of more
than 160,000 hotel-room nights. Yet, since its 1993
opening, the center's performance has fallen well
short of that figure. A recent study of the center's
activity during fiscal year 1995-96, by the
University of Rhode Island, concluded that the
center itself generated just 59,451 hotel-room
nights. That amounts to almost onethird of the
consultant's projection. The convention center is
busy-in fiscal 1996, it attracted 824,000 attendees.
But most of that attendance is local-people who
drive in from surrounding areas for the day, rather
than staying overnight.
The implications
for the state are serious. The state not only has to
pay for the debt service on convention-center bonds,
it now has to make up for an operating deficit where
Coopers & Lybrand had once forecast an annual
profit.
Philadelphia.
Philadelphia had long served the convention and
tradeshow market with its Civic Center, originally
built in 1931 and enlarged in 1967 and 1978. But, by
the early 1980s, Philadelphia business and political
leaders were contending that the Civic Center was no
longer adequate to attract national conventions.
Arguments were made that it was now too small, that
its location in West Philadelphia, relatively
distant from downtown hotels, was uncompetitive,
that it did little to boost the revitalization of
the downtown core. Mayor Bill Green commissioned a
feasibility study for a new downtown center in 1982.
The study by
Pannell Kerr Foster (PKF) projected that a new
center would attract some 48 major events after
three years with attendance of 263,000. After 10
years, the attendance total would rise to 346,000
and more than 700,000 hotel-room nights. Based on
the assumption that out-of-town visitors would stay
an average of three nights, the PKF analysis went on
to predict that the "multiplied" effect of
new visitor spending in the city would total more
than $21 billion over 30 years, and that the center
would create 5,000 new jobs. The promise of the
proposed center was that it could significantly
boost the number of conventions and tradeshows in
the city from nine or 10 to more than 40, and that
it would spur large-scale new hotel development in
the city's core.
The Pennsylvania
Convention Center opened in June 1993. An adjacent
Marriott hotel, portrayed in the PKF study as a
crucial link in the city's search for national
convention trade, opened with the aid of a
city-purchased site in January 1995.
Convention-center attendance was roughly in line
with PKF's predictions. The problem comes with
hotel-room demand. Rather than the 700,000 room
nights predicted by PKF's feasibility study, total
room nights in 1996 and 1997 were below 500,000, and
nearly half of that attendance is from the
Philadelphia metropolitan area.
Much of the
tradeshow business at the new Philadelphia facility
involves businesses like graphics and printing that
draw from a regional market. And, while national
conventions have chosen to meet in the city, their
delegates do not stay long. The average stay of
convention attendees is 1.5 nights-half of the
figure assumed in the feasibility study. Just as in
Providence, the Pennsylvania Convention Center is
filled, but largely with local and regional visitors
who stay only briefly and spend little.
Boston. The city of
Boston opened its current convention facility, the
Hynes, in 1965. It was intended to be both a meeting
location and a civic amenity, with an auditorium
that could serve the visiting company of the
Metropolitan Opera as well as national and regional
meetings. By the late 1970s, Boston public officials
were pressing to enlarge the Hynes to capture an
increased share of the convention and tradeshow
market and boost the city's lagging hotel industry.
An April 1979 analysis by the Boston Redevelopment
Authority concluded that an expanded center would
double the number of conventions and tradeshows in
the Hynes from about 30 to 60 and generate some
1,500 new hotel rooms in the city. That forecast
would bring Boston a total of 14,800 hotel rooms by
1990. Two years later, a study by Peat, Marwick and
Mitchell was equally optimistic in projecting a
doubling of conventions and tradeshows at the Hynes
to about 60 each year. And the vision was no less
positive in 1985, as the expansion effort at the
Hynes was about to begin. Another Redevelopment
Authority analysis concluded that hotel-room demand
would reach 13,800 in 1990 and 18,500 by 1995.
The expanded Hynes,
opened in January 1988, did not bring in nearly as
much business as expected. The predictions of almost
14,000 or 15,000 hotel rooms in 1990 proved about
3,000 off. And five years later, instead of more
than 18,000 hotel rooms in the city, there were just
12,300.
The projections of
new hotel demand assumed that hundreds of thousands
of new attendees would flock to the city, staying
multiple nights. In 1984, Boston hotels generated
2.58 million room nights of business. In 1986 and
1987, while the old Hynes was totally closed for the
expansion, hotel stays rose first to 3.04 million
and then to 3.15 million. Obviously, hotel-room
demand was growing despite the absence of a public
convention center. The first year of the expanded
center's operation, 1988, saw a city-wide total of
3.2 million room nights. And for the next three
years, hotel demand averaged 3.04 million room
nights. Thus there is no evidence that the expanded
Hynes has had any positive effect on Boston's hotel
business.
Politics and
place
While the public
arguments for convention-center development stress
jobs and visitor spending, the private discussions
of city business leaders have a different focus. For
them, convention centers are about far more than the
economics of space and place. A new convention
center with a price tag in the hundreds of millions
offers a means of reshaping the development
opportunities and potential of downtown property.
The politics surrounding St. Louis's new center
illustrates the role played by local business
leaders.
St. Louis opened
its new Cervantes Convention Center in 1977, naming
it after former Mayor Alfonso J. Cervantes, the
Center's most visible proponent. For the mayor, the
prospects of the new structure were obvious.
"We will be creating new jobs in a clean
industry, bringing new money to St. Louis, and
expanding the tax base to the relief of the property
taxpayers who have not fled to the suburbs."
Yet the real backing and support for a new
convention center reflected the desires of the
leadership of St. Louis's business community to
protect downtown property values.
In the late 1960s,
Mayor Cervantes embraced the notion of a
multi-purpose entertainment and tourist center on
the southern edge of the downtown core, near the
city's Union Station. The business community, in the
form of a group called Civic Progress, Incorporated,
had a different vision. With such luminaries as
August Busch of Anheuser-Busch, James McDonnell of
McDonnell Douglas, Morton May of May Department
Stores, and the CEOs of Southwestern Bell, Monsanto,
Pet, and Ralston Purina, Civic Progress carried both
political influence and economic muscle. It had
promoted and backed a set of massive bond issues in
the 1950s and 1960s that built expressways and began
downtown revitalization. The group also had taken
the lead in financing the development of Busch
Stadium and the surrounding area at the southern
edge of downtown in the early 1960s.
Discussing the
future of the downtown in July 1967, one Civic
Progress leader noted "an increasing amount of
property decay in the downtown area north of St.
Charles Street." His point was that the
downtown area needed the kind of protection from
"erosion" on the north side that it
received on the south side from the Stadium complex.
The north side of the downtown was bordered by an
African-American slum that the city targeted for
clearance in 1959. But, with limited federal and
local funds available, the city had not managed to
renew the area or protect the downtown from
"erosion." A new convention center could
make that clearance and renewal possible.
At the same time, a
massive public investment in a convention center
could also spur new private investment and building
in its immediate environs. One Civic Progress
member, Lief Sverdrup who worked for the city's
dominant engineering and architectural firm,
promoted a scheme to do just that. The Sverdrup
scheme would surround the new center with offices,
restaurants, parking, one or more major hotels, and
a new retail complex.
The
convention-center effort thus brought together the
clearance of a slum neighborhood, a boost to private
land values, and the protection of the downtown from
"erosion" in a single package. And lest
his Civic Progress colleagues failed to recognize
that the convention center was also a land deal,
Sverdrup argued at the group's December 1970 meeting
that "the Convention Center could shut off the
north side of downtown from erosion and decay the
same way the Stadium complex and other developments
in that area have shut off the south side." The
backing of the business group was crucial to the
success of the center proposal. The bonds to pay for
the new building required voter approval, and Civic
Progress was the only mechanism for generating the
$100,000 to $120,000 budget for a bond campaign.
The March 1971 vote
on the center proposal proved an embarrassment for
both the mayor and the business leaders. Despite the
promises of jobs, development, and an economic boon,
the bonds were supported by just 36 percent of the
electorate. After the defeat, the proposal was
reworked to shift the cost from property owners to
business and tourists. Once again, the backing and
financing of Civic Progress was crucial to any hope
of passage. And once again, the business group
backed the bonds, but only after city officials made
a formal commitment to the north side of downtown as
its site. Business leaders also persuaded the mayor
to stay in the background during the campaign and
placed the public relations effort in the hands of a
firm with long-standing ties to Civic Progress. With
a shift in financing that avoided a property tax
increase, the bonds passed in November 1972 with 75
percent of the vote.
The opening of the
Cervantes Center gave the city its presumed boost in
the convention trade, and the business community its
protection. And the project has continued to absorb
both public dollars and business attention, with the
expansion of the center and the new Trans World Dome
stadium next door. St. Louis is still struggling to
succeed in the national convention market, but the
northern end of the downtown now wears an expansive
band of "erosion" protection.
A national
perspective
For an Atlanta or a
Baltimore, the decision to invest millions in a
convention center in order to achieve an economic
expansion and downtown revival is often a simple
one. From the national perspective, the constant
pressure to compete by adding ever more convention
exhibition space simply rearranges the pool of
conventions and tradeshows, moving them from place
to place. The taxes foregone by the federal
government on billions of convention-center debt do
little to boost the national economy, or even to aid
needy cities. Many of the resort destinations like
Las Vegas, Anaheim, and Orlando that have led the
convention-center space race are precisely those
cities that are among the best off. But a coherent
national urban policy would suggest that federal aid
and support are least necessary there.
Indeed, whatever
the policy content of federal urban aid over the
last four decades, the local thrust has been the
salvation and renewal of the downtown business core.
Under the federal urban renewal program, cities
employed federal aid to clear downtown and
near-downtown sites for new convention centers.
Under the Urban Development Action Grant program,
communities built hotels and convention centers in
an effort to lure visitors to their central business
districts. Today, these same communities continue to
invest their dollars, and such federal grant aid as
they can secure, in similar efforts to redeem
declining downtowns with dollars from tourists and
convention goers.
All too often,
these efforts have assumed that saving a downtown
saves an entire city, that the economic well-being
of a Cleveland or Cincinnati or St. Louis depended
upon a central business district attractive to
people from somewhere else. And where the same
cities faced fiscal problems and constraints that
made it impossible for them to invest in new
convention centers, stadiums, arenas, and shopping
malls, the development of these public facilities
was regionalized-shifted to the county, metropolitan
region, or state level.
Thus, even as the
circumstances of city governments have become more
perilous, convention centers have managed to stand
above the storm, drawing upon the political
resources of state governments or broader
metropolitan areas. This regionalization of
convention-center finance stands in sharp contrast
to the limited resources available for other
physical and capital needs in older urban centers,
to say nothing of the demand for basic public
services. Yet, at the same time that urban analysts
have argued in favor of moving beyond the limits of
current cities to larger, more geographically and
economically inclusive metropolitan governments,
downtown interests and big-city business leaders
have adopted precisely that strategy to secure their
very different view of urban revival-protecting
downtown values from "erosion."
[Footnote]
1 The
analyses of proposed local convention centers are
technically not "feasibility studies,"
because they contain no substantive forecasts of
revenues and expenditures. However, they do sustain
the arguments of convention-center promoters, with a
remarkably similar set of arguments and analyses.
