THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 9, 1997 TAG: 9702070276
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: ON THE STREET
SOURCE: Bill Reed
LENGTH: 66 lines
There was good news and bad news recently from a consultant studying the pros and cons of expanding the Beach's 16-year-old Pavilion Convention Center.
The purveyor was David C. Petersen of Price Waterhouse, who was hired by the city to conduct the study for $68,000, plus expenses.
First, the bad news:
The Pavilion - with 57,120 square feet of exhibit space and 5,600 square feet of meeting space - is too small to attract major conventions or trade shows to Virginia Beach. It's even too small to bring back many shows that traditionally rent meeting space here.
Although the Beach has 11,000 hotel and motel rooms available, only 2,000 or so are deemed ``convention'' grade, meaning fancy enough to attract the corporate or government suits who normally attend these gatherings.
More than 30 new and large convention centers have been constructed across the country, and many are getting more and more of the high-dollar convention and trade show business.
There are not enough upscale restaurants, shops and entertainment venues near the Pavilion or the Oceanfront to attract the suits who traditionally attend conventions and like to spend big bucks at satellite commercial amenities.
The Beach - at least in the near future - can't compete with the likes of Alexandria or Atlantic City with their wall-to-wall Hyatt Regencies, Marriotts and Hiltons and their meeting and exhibit rooms. These are ``full-service'' hotels with hot and cold running bell hops, doormen, room service persons, restaurants, health spas, tennis courts and indoor-out-door pools - not to mention flossy women's and men's shops in their lobbies. While the tab may be $200 a night, this is where big conventioneers like to go, hospitality industry surveys show. Corporations and government agencies pay their way.
Even if a major hotel were to build at the Oceanfront, it could not sustain itself year-round on just convention trade.
To expand the Pavilion, the city would more than likely have to to finance the project all by itself through sales taxes and municipal bonding schemes. States like Illinois, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Oregon have paid for all or almost all of their top meeting facilities. Virginia doesn't do that sort of thing.
Now the good news:
The Beach can climb back into convention and trade and consumer show business - especially the latter two - by tripling the size of the Pavilion. More specifically the city should build 150,000-square-feet of exhibit space, 35,000-square-feet of ballroom space and and 20,000-square-feet of meeting space. The not-so-good-news is this would cost about $98 million.
Tripling the size of the Pavilion could bring $41 million to $63 million a year in new revenue to the city. This translates into $1.5 million to $2.2 million in taxes to the city and $1.3 million to $2 million in taxes to the state.
Virginia Beach has the beach, sun and surf, the largest municipal population in the state and easy access by land, sea and air.
The Beach's most likely market is the SMERFs. This is an acronym for social, military, educational, religious and fraternal groups and many of them already use the Pavilion. The city just needs more of them and in bigger groups.
SMERFs may not spend as much as corporate and government suits, but they tend to hold more meetings a year and they meet in the fall and winter when resort hotels and restaurants are not jammed with tourists.
The Pavilion staff is on the ball and is therefore an asset to the city as well as the state. Staff members therefore would probably continue being an asset to a much larger meeting facility.