Jax is "not on the radar" as a convention site

[vicupstate]

^^ All of your bullet points are valid, but if this results in merely moving the existing events then it won't make much difference UNLESS the center visitors are NOT locals. If I go to a Gun Show or Home Show or whatever at the new center and I live on the West side, am I going to go to the Elbow or the Landing afterwards?  Not likely. The new center will need to attract conventions that we currently don't get.  The article seems to imply that won't change simply from the move.   

[FlaBoy]

^^ All of your bullet points are valid, but if this results in merely moving the existing events then it won't make much difference UNLESS the center visitors are NOT locals. If I go to a Gun Show or Home Show or whatever at the new center and I live on the West side, am I going to go to the Elbow or the Landing afterwards?  Not likely. The new center will need to attract conventions that we currently don't get.  The article seems to imply that won't change simply from the move.

I disagree with that. If you parked and were down there, you would be much more likely to grab lunch at Olio or Cowford, especially if with your significant other. At the Prime, you certainly would not.

[Jim]

The move would certainly do both: generate more foot traffic in the Elbow and draw more regional conventions. Nobody says it will or has to become a major convention center player but as Lake noted, it will do much more than it does now if moved to a more synergistic location.

[thelakelander]

^^ All of your bullet points are valid, but if this results in merely moving the existing events then it won't make much difference UNLESS the center visitors are NOT locals. If I go to a Gun Show or Home Show or whatever at the new center and I live on the West side, am I going to go to the Elbow or the Landing afterwards?  Not likely. The new center will need to attract conventions that we currently don't get.  The article seems to imply that won't change simply from the move.   

The Prime Osborn already draws events that don't cater exclusively to locals. The Black Expo is an example of that. Locals also eat out. The restaurant scenes in Riverside and San Marco are examples of emerging regional dining districts driven by locals. With that said, a larger exhibition hall adjacent to the Hyatt does result in having the capacity to draw and keep larger events in Jax. They may not be "major" like what Orlando draws. They're more likely to the scale of events that outgrew our facility and moved to larger centers like Daytona's Ocean Center. The cheerleading conference we lost years ago is an example of this.

[Tacachale]

^Yeah, I don't see why attendees would have to be out of towners to have an impact. The idea that locals won't go to the bars and restaurants, or even stay at hotels, is false.

Last year I went to an academic conference in Savannah. Many if not most folks there were from the area, but they went out to the bars and restaurants at night, and many even stayed at the hotel or others nearby.

[vicupstate]

The Cheer-leading event won't come back unless the facility is bigger, will it be bigger?

Locals can go to the Landing/Elbow any time they want. Yeah, they may go when they happen to be nearby, but if they would have eaten on the Westside (or wherever they hail locally), then it isn't 'new' money in the economy anyway.

While there might be some 'juice' from moving a center that primarily caters to locals, it isn't going to near enough, IMO, to justify this level of spending.

In order to be worthwhile, the new center will need to be some combination of 1) bigger, 2) better, 3)capable of expanding the market of conventions willing and able to come here 4) create synergy with other things 5) extend the stay (ideally such that it puts more heads in beds) of conventioneers.

If it won't check at LEAST 3 of those boxes, it wouldn't be worth it, IMO. Number 2 and 4 are pretty much a given, be but there needs to be more than that.   A marginally overall improvement is not sufficient unless somebody else is paying for this thing, which seems like a fantasy to me.       

[Tacachale]

I'd argue that Westsiders spending money Downtown serves our goal of improving Downtown.

[thelakelander]

A relocated center would be larger than the current Prime Osborn. It would achieve at least 4 of 5 five things Vic mentiined in his most recent post. However, achieving them doesn't mean Jax will attract or have the capacity to handle the "major" conventions going to first tier markets.

[thelakelander]

In addition, all the convention center focused debate also avoids an obvious dilemma of maintaining status quo. Leaving it in the Prime Osborn severly limits the potential of bringing passenger rail back downtown, along with integrated TOD surrounding it. Also, flat out getting out of the business only hurts downtown economically by running off the remaining decent events the Prime Osborn still hosts.

[JaxJersey-licious]

We all pretty much agree that the convention center needs to be moved and bigger and the building repurposed but we have to be honest about what kind of undertaken a new convention center in any form would be. A sobering thought is that Nashville's convention center costs an incredible $623 million back in 2012 and they needed an extra $20 million this year for improvements. Even though they won't build anything near as extravagant, would that kind of investment be worth it for whatever extra visitors and economic impact it would bring? The naysayers about Jacksonville's readiness for a new center may have a point.

[thelakelander]

To be fair, Nashville's center and anything built in Jax are apples and oranges. Spending $100 million in public funds locally would be overboard to me.

[thelakelander]

To further shed light on this, the PO's exhibition hall is 78,500sf. Nashville 's Music City Center's is 350,000sf. Several previous studies have recommended we'll be fine with something slightly larger, that's closer to 100,000sf than 350k sf. Nashville's center was built from the ground up and covers over 2.1 million sf overall. We don't need to build from scratch since the Hyatt and its meeting space are already there. We're also not in Nashville's league in this particular industry. In simple terms, we need a box the size of a Walmart immediately adjacent to the Hyatt, not the Taj Mahal.

[JaxJersey-licious]

True its not fair to compare what theses cities do but like Nashville the goal is to get a significantly bigger slice of the convention industry pie. Anything less and you may as well make do with what we have until the city becomes much more of a destination. Another set of concerns I have is with the city building a new convention center and "partnering" with the Hyatt for additional space. True it will bring the cost of construction way down but I'm a little wary about this arrangement for the following reasons:

Wouldn't the fact that a convention booking the new main hall having to go across the street to use ancillary meeting space put us at a disadvantage with similar size venues that have those rooms right there in the same location?

Given that there would most likely be an entity managing the new convention center separate from the Hyatt booking its own events in their ballrooms, wouldn't the possible problem of space availability hamper efforts to draw possible out-of-town conventions?

More importantly, since a decent size convention would likely have no choice but to use Hyatt's meeting rooms and facilities, what would prevent the new hotel ownership that invested all that money in it from practicing collusion, gouging, undercutting, or any other strong-armed tactics to maximize revenue? For example, if an exhibitor wanting to use the new hall and needed the Hyatt's meeting space, couldn't the hotel require the exhibitor to pre-book or put deposits down on more hotel rooms and other services they may not need just to be able to utilize their space? Wouldn't that leverage the Hyatt has dissuade any other hotel operators from setting up in the core?

[thelakelander]

You don't build a Nashville sized center just because you want a bigger piece of the market pie. Scale still applies. Everything else you mentioned can be dealt with pretty easy. There's several different models out there that are a success, that don't involve doing or investing what some of the naysay theories suggest.

[MusicMan]

Jacksonville, home of the "Amazon.com" Convention Center!

Think of the trade shows........................