The Phoenix City Council Economic Development and the Arts Subcommittee expressed a desire to move forward with an expansion of the Phoenix Convention Center during its Dec. 10 meeting.
Vice Mayor Ann O’Brien recommended staff discuss the expansion further in March. The March discussion will include a presentation outlining the next steps.
The expansion may feature an additional hotel adjacent to the Convention Center. Discussions to increase the capacity of the Convention Center are a result of the Center experiencing record attendance.
Subcommittee members also discussed the growth of competing convention centers in different markets. Several competitors are currently working on expansions.
The Phoenix Convention Center suffers from a lack of nearby hotel rooms. Increasing the number of hotel rooms in the vicinity could vastly improve the odds of attracting more and larger companies.
A study found the area needs an additional 800-1,200 hotel rooms. Some subcommittee members, however, said the study is outdated and the area likely needs more than currently projected.
Visit Phoenix, which created the study, found the region may have lost as many as 276 meetings and conventions due to the lack of hotel space. This is projected to have been 977,000 attendees, 1.95 million hotel room nights and $1.5B in spending.
Subcommittee members also discussed the Convention Center’s South Building. The building is a single story, while the other buildings are several stories tall. This could provide an opportunity to scale the South Building to vertically match the other buildings.
The vertical expansion would leave room for an additional hotel that could connect to the Convention Center. Subcommittee members also discussed transforming the parking garage across from the West Building into a hotel.
Subcommittee members also mentioned they have already received interest from hotel developers interested in building in the area. (Source)
1 Comment
The city had an opportunity for a hotel at the Regency Park Garage a few years back, but turned down Hines proposal which was a nice one. Now that they are revisiting that, there were no new proposals that met the last deadline.