Everybody’s talking about the event venue downtown Greenville needs, but they’re not all talking about the same thing
Last week a group of business leaders held a panel discussion to talk about the possible implications of a downtown conference center in Greenville. The consensus: Yes, Greenville needs to look at locating a conference center downtown to draw more business-focused people from out of the area who will eat at restaurants, shop in retail stores and stay at hotels.
Earlier this year the city of Greenville joined with Greenville County and VisitGreenvilleSC to issue a request for proposals for a feasibility study to be conducted for a possible downtown convention center. The current facility, the TD Center, is large but lacks an anchor hotel and nearby attractions that attract meeting planners when booking conferences.
Bids were due March 19 from “qualified professional firms or individuals to conduct a comprehensive market demand analysis and evaluation of the potential of constructing a new convention facility in the Downtown area.” Four companies responded to the RFP and are currently being evaluated.
“I think the most important thing that will come out of [the RFP study] is the demand analysis. What is our opportunity? What is our potential?” said Chris Stone, president of VisitGreenvilleSC.
Convention vs. conference center – what’s the difference?
The terms “convention center” and “conference center” are often used interchangeably, but event planners say the difference has to do with the type of meetings held at the venue. Convention centers are typically larger venues that can house consumer-type events, drawing from the local market, such as home and garden shows, boat shows and RV shows. Conference centers are smaller venues focused on business, organization or industry-specific events.
“Financially, it wouldn’t work” to simply build a hotel at the TD Center, said D.J. Rama, president of JHM Hotels, as the area is unlikely to fill the hotel rooms for the periods when there aren’t conferences booked.
Meeting planners, who book the conferences and hotels, are looking for venues of at least 100,000 square feet that can supply the number of hotel rooms they require; with restaurants, retail and attractions nearby; located in a popular enough destination that people would be willing to travel there, Stone said.
Proximity to nearby attractions is important because convention centers alone don’t make money, said Ken Betsch with Betsch Associates, a Greenville architectural firm that has designed conference and convention centers around the country.
“Not a single one in the country makes a profit,” Betsch said. “But they bring people to the community to eat at the restaurants, shop in the shops and do other entertainment in the city.”
City records show the TD Center finished last year with a $454,134 loss that the city subsidized.
Finding the sweet spot
Business panel members agreed size and location will be the most important factors in this discussion. Greenville needs to find and focus on its “sweet spot” and avoid killing off the convention business that’s already here, Stone told the group.
Greenville must weigh the possibility of keeping the TD Center and building a new conference center, Stone said. A key question to ask, he said, is “can a destination like this afford two buildings?”
Betsch said it’s equally imperative “to make sure that the building is built to the market it’s trying to serve, [to] determine what you’re trying to attract and that it can change depending on meeting requirements. It’ll be important to have someone who is willing to say ‘No, you don’t need a new building downtown.’”
Getting it right
“Most cities don’t get it right. They’re full of convention centers that have killed off areas of their cities,” said Greenville Mayor Knox White. “We’re not going to find a lot of models around the country of cities that got it right. It’ll be important to make sure we get the size right, get the location right – that it fits Greenville, that it’s realistic and fits the mixed-use environment that we have here.”
Transportation is another key factor to evaluate, Betsch said. Every city has its strengths and weaknesses, and one of the weaknesses in Greenville is transportation.
Stone cited Chattanooga, Tenn., and Raleigh, N.C., as two cities that have “gotten it right.” But there’s no reason why we can’t be innovative and creative and “do something that hasn’t been done,” he said.
Greenville needs more capacity downtown, but “we need to be careful that we don’t get into a situation where locals can’t get into restaurants and can’t get a parking place and they don’t want to go downtown anymore, ” cautioned Bob Hughes, president of Hughes Development Corp.
An evaluation committee is currently reviewing the RFPs that were received, and will determine whether to award the contract or reduce it to a short list and conduct interviews. No timeframe has been set for that process.
“This consultant is going to have quite a job to do,” said Mayor White.
DIVE DEEPER // The book “Convention Center Follies” by Heywood T. Sanders “deflates overblown claims that convention centers will contribute to urban economic development and explains why city leaders so easily succomb to these claims,” according to one reviewer. bit.ly/convention-center-follies
