Execs back off convention target date
Washington Business Journal - by Christine Cubé Staff Reporter
For years, Washington's tourism industry has been looking forward to the opening of a shiny new convention center in March 2003.
So how come convention groups who booked for March 2003 will have to meet in the old convention center?
Because the new one won't be ready to hold a convention until May 2003.
Maybe.
It's tough to tell exactly what's going on, but this much is certain: Though the March 2003 opening date has been bandied about for years, local tourism officials say it was never firm. And while they're still shooting for a March 2003 grand opening, it's really anybody's guess where groups will meet in March and April 2003.
Besides, they say groups that booked convention space for those two months weren't guaranteed they'd be meeting in the new building.
'We absolutely did not promise them'
Several of the six groups scheduled to meet here in March or April 2003 say it doesn't really matter where they meet. At least one, however, apparently has decided to cancel its late February-early March 2003 convention.
The Washington Convention & Tourism Corp. (WCTC) has received word that the National Association of College Stores will cancel its meeting scheduled for Feb. 26-March 6, 2003. Executives at the Oberlin, Ohio-based group had wanted to be one of the first groups in the new center.
Bill Fox of the National Association of College Stores says his group still is exchanging correspondence with WCTC, discussing the status of the group meeting in either Washington Convention Center. But local officials say the deal is dead.
Bill Hanbury, president of WCTC (http://www.washington.org), says National Association of College Stores was never promised a meeting in the new center.
"We will make best efforts to deliver on the new center, but we absolutely did not promise them the new center. They changed their minds and we let them off the hook," Hanbury says. "Their assumption that the new building would be completed was not correct. We believe there is no reason to be in an adversarial position with them because they're a valued client that we want to see convene in Washington in the future."
Another year in the old building
Other groups that plan to meet here in March and April 2003 include the D.C. Dental Society and U.S. Figure Skating Association. At least one isn't planning to cancel, regardless.
"If [the new center] is completed on time, they said we might very well be the first major event at the new center," says Bill Howell, general manager of events at Post Newsweek Tech Media Group, which hosts the annual information technology show FOSE (http://www.fose.com). "If not, we'll have another great year of FOSE at the old facility.
"The idea of moving into the new convention center and the high-tech facilities it has will certainly make our life better," Howell says. "But wherever we are, we'll have a great event."
Howell says his group is receiving regular updates on the convention center's progress. FOSE's 2003 trade show is scheduled for April 8-10 and is expected to attract about 18,000 attendees.
Thom Puccio, vice president of convention sales for WCTC, says the first full-house event scheduled for the new convention center is the annual meeting of Natick, Mass.-based North American Society for Pacing Electrophysiology May 14-17, 2003.
That group is expected to bring approximately 8,000 attendees who will occupy about 5,300 hotel rooms during the peak nights of the convention. The convention will take up about 500,000 square feet of the 725,000 square feet of exhibit space in the new center.
"We booked groups smaller in size and able to fit in the existing center if indeed the new center was not open on time," Puccio says. "It would be nice to have them in the new center if it works out."
E-mail: ccube@bizjournals.com Phone: 703/816-0332
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