Ron Littlepage: A riverfront convention center can become reality

[stjr]

Pick a site, give me your square footage requirements and I'll explain.

Not sure I get your drift here, Lake.  But, I'll try and play along.  At your preferred site, the old courthouse, if it maxes out at a 200,000 sf room with attendant spaces, how does it go to a single 300,000 or 400,000 sf room, not a two level affair with 200,000 sf per floor?

[thelakelander]

Not sure I get your drift here, Lake.  But, I'll try and play along.

No tricks, I just wanted to see what site dimensions we were working with.

Unless I'm totally off, the Bay Street site should be able to accommodate a little more than 400,000sf on one floor, excluding the Hyatt's facility, assuming you use the City Hall annex block also.  So in a vertical format, you put support facilities, street level retail, dining and smaller meeting rooms on the first floor.  Then you would use the entire second (bridging over Market Street) as an exhibition hall.  If we want to phase, we could leave the City Hall Annex standing for a while (lease it out for office space in the interim) and build the initial convention center on courthouse site.

[stjr]

Lake, I am just playing along here.  How many CC's have an "L" shaped floor like you suggest vs. a square or rectangle?  What happened to my parking garage? 

[thelakelander]

http://How many CC's have an "L" shaped floor like you suggest vs. a square or rectangle?

There are variations, depending on local site conditions all across the US.  For example:

The Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philly is shaped as an L.  It also has two levels of exhibition halls.
http://www.paconvention.com/home2/planners/floorplans/

The Orange County Convention Center in Orlando has two exhibition halls with International Drive splitting them.
http://www.occc.net/Planner/OverviewFloorPlans.asp

The Washington State Convention & Trade Center in Seattle has an exhibition level shaped like an "H".
http://www.wsctc.com/pdfs/floor_plans/Level4ExhibitHalls.pdf

http://What happened to my parking garage?

Its integrated with the building the way it is in cities like Seattle (WSCTC) and Detroit (Cobo Hall).  If we have to have a suburban design, then a parking garage would have to be built on a nearby lot, like the JEA parcel at Ocean & Bay.

[tufsu1]

most Convention Centers have several differenet exhibit hall spaces....and very few have as much as 400,000 in on room....remember that they are often used by several groups at once....and the groups often need meeting rooms, exhibit space, and ballrooms....so th shape of the building is not much of an issue.

And if you're concerned about having an exhibit hall on the 2nd floor, not that the PA Convention Center has the same thing...it just requires a ramp up to a loading dock.