THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 29, 1997 TAG: 9701290476
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN WEINTRAUB, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 73 lines
The resort city is a great place for trade shows but probably couldn't lure top-end conventions no matter how hard it tried, a consultant told the City Council Tuesday.
David C. Peterson of Price Waterhouse LLP recommended the council consider expanding the Pavilion Convention Center at the foot of Route 44, but said building a new convention center or a hotel-conference center like the Norfolk Marriott would probably be a waste of taxpayers' money.
Mayor Meyera E. Oberndorf told Peterson that his advice was not what she or the other council members expected.
``You didn't tell us what we wanted to hear,'' she said. ``We wanted you to give us an easy bullet that was going to solve everything and not cost too much.''
The council has talked repeatedly over the last year about building a new facility at the Oceanfront instead of investing in the 16-year-old Pavilion, which is about a mile from the hotel rooms and attractions of the resort strip.
Several council members had hoped to interest a major hotel chain in jointly funding a hotel-conference center overlooking the ocean. Oberndorf said the Pavilion is losing a lot of business to the Norfolk Marriott and other places that provide meeting and hotel rooms under one roof and offer a little more luxury than most resort strip hotels.
``We are finding we're being pecked to death by the other cities,'' she said.
Peterson, who has conducted similar studies across the country for 25 years, said he's not convinced the city could make back its investment in a hotel-conference center.
There are two separate markets in the convention business, Peterson said. Groups on expense accounts tend to go to convention centers in the middle of large cities with lots of hotel rooms, restaurants and activities close by, he said. Virginia Beach just can't compete with Disney World or downtown Boston or Philadelphia - which recently built a $522 million convention center, he said.
But people who are paying their own way prefer to go to easy-to-reach, relatively inexpensive places like Virginia Beach, and they care less about having a hotel room right next door, he said. Trade shows that need a lot of space would also be drawn to the Pavilion if it had bigger exhibit halls and some more meeting rooms, he said.
The Pavilion will continue to draw events like home and garden shows, he said.
Right now, the Pavilion is drawing about 20 conventions and trade shows and 50 consumer shows a year - an extremely high number considering the age and size of the building, Peterson said.
A modest expansion would allow the Pavilion to lure 10 more conventions annually and attract more people to other events, according to the Price Waterhouse study, which cost about $65,000. An even more extensive expansion would bring the total number of conventions and trade shows up to 40 and dramatically increase the attendance at those events, he concluded.
The said spending from those new conventioneers would contribute between $1.5 million and $2.2 million a year to the local economy, the study shows.
Now, the Pavilion has 57,120 feet of exhibition space, no ballroom and only 7 meeting rooms with a total of 5,600 square feet.
Peterson recommended increasing exhibit space to 150,000 square feet, adding a 35,000-square-foot ballroom and 20,000 square feet of new meeting rooms.
He did not put a cost estimate on that expansion, but city estimates have ranged from $35 million to nearly $100 million, depending on the scope of the work.
The council made no decisions Tuesday in light of Peterson's report.
Council member Louis R. Jones said he will have to spend some time thinking about the recommendations before deciding what step he will support.
``My inclination was not to make a major investment in the Pavilion,'' Jones said. ``He came up with some pretty good logic and I think we have to pay attention to what he said.''
KEYWORDS: VIRGINIA BEACH CITY COUNCIL