just 180,000 square feet in 1986, reached 2.05 million square feet in late 2003, fueled by the growing river of revenues from a tax on the county’s more than 100,000 hotel rooms.
Many growing Sunbelt cities have also chosen to invest in ever larger and more expansive convention centers, much as Phoenix did. Dallas expanded its center steadily through the 1990s, reaching over one million square feet of exhibit space in 2002. Houston added 420,000 square feet of space, almost doubling the size of the George R. Brown Convention Center, in November 2003. Two years earlier, San Antonio had opened an expansion of its Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center that doubled its size.
While the total center space has been boosted by the growth of very large centers in places like Chicago, Las Vegas, and Orlando, a broad array of cities now also boast up-to-date convention facilities intended to lure the proverbially lucrative meeting and tradeshow business. In California, the Ontario Convention Center opened in late 1997, San Jose’s new McEnery Convention Center in 1989, and Sacramento’s expanded center in 1996. Denver’s Colorado Convention Center opened for business in 1990 and was doubled in size in 2004. Hartford’s new Connecticut Convention Center began operation in 2005, the Rhode Island Convention Center in Providence in 1993, and the new Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in 2004.
The Baltimore Convention Center was expanded to more than double its original size in 1997, and entirely new centers have opened in Ocean City, Maryland; Richmond, Hampton, and Virginia Beach, Virginia. In the Midwest, the new Greater Columbus Convention Center opened its doors in 1993, Cincinnati completed a major expansion of its Duke Energy Center in 2006, and Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Grand Rapids, Michigan, are home to newly expanded centers as of 2005. Branson, Missouri, opened its new center in 2007 and Peoria, Illinois, completed an expansion the same year. The Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis has also seen a series of expansions—in 1993, 2001, and most recently early 2011.
The convention center building boom has not been limited to central cities. Suburban communities have also sought their share of the visitor activity and economic impact promised by convention center backers. Overland Park, Kansas, a Kansas City suburb, opened its new convention center and publicly financed hotel in 2002, and Chicago suburb Schaumburg, Illinois, opened a new convention center and an adjacent publicly owned hotel in 2006. Also in suburban Chicago, Rosemont’s Donald Stephens Convention Center more than doubled in size from 1986 to 2001, to 845,000 square feet of exhibit space. The suburban Atlanta area includes the Cobb Galleria Center, the North Atlanta Trade Center, the Georgia International Convention Center (near Hartsfield-Jackson Airport), and the Gwinnett Center in Duluth.
The contemporary convention center building boom is in many ways a dual triumph of politics and finance. Convention centers and expansions are major public investments, commonly in hundreds of millions of dollars. They most often are financed with some form of long-term public borrowing. And historically, they have not necessarily been widely embraced or approved by local taxpayers and voters.
The civic auditoriums and convention centers built in the first half of the twentieth century were commonly developed by city governments, financed using general obligation bonds. In the vast majority of states, that debt required majority—in some states, two-thirds majority—approval by the local electorate. When city governments began the wave of “modern” convention facilities after World War II, often as part of new civic centers or downtown renewal schemes, those too had to be voted on and approved by the local electorate.
Los Angeles civic leaders first sought a major convention venue early in the twentieth century, but local voters failed to provide the needed two-thirds majority for a memorial auditorium bond issue in 1920. Mayor Fletcher Bowron backed another auditorium bond issue in 1939 with the argument that Cleveland’s auditorium was a “great success.” But his enthusiasm was not shared by the city council, which voted against putting the auditorium bond proposal to the voters. A plan for a “huge civic auditorium costing $25,000,000” was on the ballot in 1951, paired with a proposed music center and slum clearance funding. All three propositions were defeated. Auditorium backers returned with a $27 million auditorium and convention hall bond plan in May 1953. Despite the editorial plea by the Los Angeles Times that “national gatherings …. pass us by,” the voters again failed to produce a two-thirds majority. Convention hall backers tried again in June 1954, with the argument that the city had lost $38 million the previous year in convention business. And once again the voters said no. Los Angeles did not open a convention center until July 1971, a feat it only managed after an extended debate over the site, and by using a special authority to issue the bonds and bypass the city’s voters.33
The efforts to build a new civic auditorium or convention hall in San Diego were no less problematic. A plan for a new civic center and auditorium in 1947 was defeated at the polls. A bond proposal for a convention hall and theater was voted on in June 1956, and failed to get the required two-thirds majority, winning approval from just over 60 percent of the voters. City officials and civic leaders chose to place the convention center scheme on the ballot again in November; again it failed, winning just a 49.9 percent “yes” vote. San Diego only succeeded in building a new convention center in 1964 by finding a way around the voters, using a combination of a lease arrangement and the proceeds from the sale of other city property. Business leaders and the Centre City Development Corporation developed a plan for a new downtown convention center in the late 1970s. Seeking to avoid a public vote, the city council adopted a scheme financed with lease revenue bonds in October 1980. But citizen antipathy and the reaction of outlying hotel owners opposed to a downtown center that would provide them little business led to a successful petition drive that forced a public vote. In a May 1981 ballot, the proposed center received just 43 percent of the vote and was defeated.34
Other cities demonstrated a parallel fragility of convention center bond proposals. Cleveland voters turned down two successive funding plans in the 1950s, finally approving one on the third try. Atlanta’s electorate defeated a proposed Civic Center in 1962, approving a less expensive version the following year. Raleigh voters in 1992 defeated a proposed $95 million convention center bond issue by 58 to 42 percent.
In more recent years Pittsburgh area voters turned down a proposal for a new convention center (together with new sports stadium) in 1997; Columbus voters twice defeated tax issues to fund a new convention center; San Jose voters failed to provide a sufficient majority for a center expansion in 2002; and Portland, Oregon voters nixed a convention center expansion in 1998. Yet despite the verdict of local voters, each of these cities, much like Los Angeles and San Diego, succeeded in building a new convention center or expansion. That success in the face of electoral defeat has been managed with a series of financial and political innovations. Pittsburgh turned to a sports and exhibition authority; Columbus created a countywide convention facilities authority; Portland turned to a combination of city, county, and metro area government. What these cities, and a host of others, have managed is nothing less than a reconstruction of the means of financing convention facilities and similar projects, employing a variety of fiscal vehicles that avoid the “problems” of popular democracy and voter review. This fiscal reconstruction is the focus of Chapter 2.
The convention center boom has also been built on a parallel reconstruction of urban politics. It is not just reluctant voters who have stood in the way of convention center development. For decades, center building was stymied by local conflict and opposition over issues beyond the immediate fiscal ones. Much of that conflict involved disputes over location and site. Chicago’s efforts to build a major convention hall from the 1920s into the 1950s were marked by continuing disputes over where a new facility would go, and thus who would benefit or suffer. During the 1960s, St. Louis saw two competing convention center proposals, one from the mayor and one from local business leaders, at very different downtown sites. And in San Diego, Mayor Pete Wilson’s plans for a new downtown center in 1980 were opposed by a coalition of outlying hotel owners and defeated at the polls. Yet in all these cases, and dozens of others, the apparent conflict was eventually successfully managed,
