Convention Center numbers suggest expansion was a success

Little robots had lots of room to maneuver, and there was space aplenty for hands to explore in the hands-on labs. The bloggers' cafe fit quite nicely, too, the International Society for Technology in Education discovered last week when it returned to Philadelphia for the first time since 2005.

The first time, in other words, that the 20,500-member ISTE gathered at the much-enlarged Convention Center.

"The expansion made all the difference in the world, as far as giving us the flexibility to build the experience for attendees and have the kind of conference we wanted," said Don Knezek, chief executive officer of the Washington-based group.

So successful was its get-together, ISTE organizers said, that it will be back in 2015, putting Philadelphia on its four-year convention rotation with San Diego (2012); San Antonio, Texas (2013); and Atlanta (2014). ISTE filled 28,535 rooms during its four-day stay, worth $40.29 million in local impact.

For a midtier convention town that was never a heavy hitter in the eyes of meeting and trade-show planners, the coveted rotation spot is considered early affirmation that the Convention Center expansion - at $786 million the most costly public-works project in the state's history - is bearing fruit.

Initial indicators show that convention and tourism business here has gotten a boost since the expansion's opening March 4.

Convention attendance at the center from January to May was up 26 percent from the same period last year, according to figures released last week by the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority. Spending by convention participants on hotels, restaurants, shops, and other local businesses was up 71 percent year to date from 2010.

The positive numbers are coming in as Convention Center management and labor unions continue talks toward new contracts. The city has been dogged by union rules that many say drive up operating costs for the conventions and trade shows that come here.

The expansion boosted the size of the Convention Center 62 percent and made it the 14th-largest in the United States. Exhibit space increased from 440,000 square feet to 679,000. The number of exhibit halls shot up from four to seven. Ballroom area went from 32,000 square feet to 87,400 with the addition of the Terrace Ballroom, and meeting rooms increased from 50 to 79.

Total space now equals 2.3 million square feet, one million of which is sellable.

"The building is doing what it was designed to do, which was to create bigger numbers," said Jack Ferguson, president and CEO of the Convention and Visitors Bureau, which books the center. "People have been blown away."

Ferguson said that 67,000 more room nights had been booked this fiscal year (which ended Friday) for future years, and that $3.5 billion in bookings related to the Convention Center had been secured. Of that, he said, $2.8 billion could not have been made without the expansion.

Though hospitality-industry observers and city hoteliers said it was still too early to draw firm conclusions - the real test will be winter, they said, because of weather-related challenges - those who championed the expansion said the numbers validated that it was worth the cost.

"So far, it is everything we expected," said Ahmeenah Young, president and CEO of the Convention Center Authority, which oversees the facility.

With the exception of a few kinks - the new escalators stopped twice, and some outdoor lights at the Broad Street entrance malfunctioned - Young called the expansion's launch trouble-free.

Its first simultaneous events - something impossible before the expansion - were the Philadelphia International Flower Show (March 6 to 13) in the old building and Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education (March 12 to 16) in the new building at 111 N. Broad St. The two drew more than a quarter-million people.

"Add those two together and you can just imagine the amount of water consumed because of all of those toilet flushes," said Young, referring to the bigger center's 444 bathrooms, 591 toilets, 173 urinals, and 123 stalls for the handicapped. "That was the kind of stuff we had to watch - to make sure there were no plumbing issues and there was enough toilet paper, just like you would go through a checklist for a celebratory event for your new home."

Since March, the center has hosted 11 citywide conventions, those requiring at least 2,000 hotel rooms on peak nights. In addition to ISTE, student personnel administrators and the American Transplant Congress, which met April 30 to May 4, have already pledged to return.

The three biggest conventions so far - the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses, Lightfair International, and ISTE - filled up all 44 Center City hotels, Ferguson said.

That underscored the need for 1,500 to 1,800 more rooms, he said, because several suburban hotels, such as the Holiday Inn in Cherry Hill, also benefited.

The American Transplant Congress, which is based in Mount Laurel, drew 5,000 participants and booked 15,547 hotel rooms over five days.

Although the group - physicians, surgeons, and transplant organizers - gathered mostly in the original portion of the Convention Center, Pam Ballinger, vice president of meetings and exhibits for association headquarters, said she liked how the buildings seamlessly connected and shared color schemes.

Something else caught Ballinger's attention: A member of the Laborers Union, unloading the group's show materials, thanked her for bringing business to Philadelphia.

"I have never had that in another city happen to me," Ballinger said. "It's indicative of how far we've come. The [city's] reputation has been is that labor has been difficult. I couldn't have found them to be more helpful and hospitable."

Lightfair International, billed as the world's largest architectural and commercial lighting trade show, used the bigger Convention Center here May 15 to 19 because its usual venue - the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York - was under renovation.

Although the show has not decided on locations beyond 2012, it had good things to say about Philadelphia. Lightfair's show here broke all attendance (23,709) and exhibit-space (more than 200,000 square feet) records in the group's 22-year history.

"The Pennsylvania Convention Center fully accommodated the needs of our greatly expanded Lightfair International 2011 show," the show's managing director, Rochelle Burt, wrote in an e-mail last week.

Visitor traffic at Reading Terminal Market from January to mid-June was up 3.8 percent from a year ago, general manager Paul Steinke said. Last week's ISTE gathering, the biggest since the expansion opened, sent market traffic "through the roof," he said.

ISTE, whose "Unlocking Potential" theme spread across 500 exhibits in three halls, also helped showcase how technologically advanced the expanded Convention Center space is.

Keynote speakers were simulcast throughout different parts of the building, allowing those attending to cluster and watch from various monitors.

And the convention's participants used all 670 electrical outlets in the public concourses and meeting rooms for laptops and other devices, in what looked like a technology boot camp.

Among them were Nathan Tomic, a middle school e-learning instructor from Melbourne, Australia, who sat on the floor with his iPad.

"It's absolutely amazing," Tomic said of the space. "It's just enormous."

Sheila Perlite, a library-technology coordinator for St. Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco, also seemed impressed.

"Maybe because it's new - it just feels fresh and clean," Perlite said. "One of the staff members even asked me if my WiFi was working OK. I was pleasantly surprised."

Learn more about the Convention Center at www.philly.com/conventionEndText