Convention center gets sobering news

Jeffrey Libby

Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2002 | 11:20 a.m.

Stranded among World War II era houses and low-budget casinos, and a tidy taxi fare from the nearest hotel, the Henderson Convention Center may change its name after 20 years to reflect its long-standing function as a downtown community center for locals.

That is the sobering talk among convention center board members and city officials after the initial draft of an $81,000 market study recommended that the city convention center focus on locals while resorts such as Lake Las Vegas, Sunset Station and Green Valley Ranch Station handle the city's booming convention business.

Though the final report from Chicago-based Clarion Associates is not expected until mid-November, the clear theme of the draft is that the convention center should complement, but not compete with, private resorts.

The recommendation is an abrupt shift from a year ago, when Lisa Jolley, executive director of the Henderson Convention Center and Visitors Bureau, spoke informally of building a niche facility catering to small groups of high-end executives.

It's also a shift from a 1998 study that recommended expanding the existing Water Street facility's 13,800 square feet of display space to bring more people to the struggling commercial corridor of mostly independently owned shops and restaurants.

"Basically, the consensus is that we're not looking at building a new facility," Jolley said. "We're trying to (turn it) into something a little more resident-friendly."

A new name would call it what it is: a community center, said Tom Tait, a convention center board member and the vice president of Lake Las Vegas.

Meanwhile, seven miles east, the Ritz-Carlton Lake Las Vegas is building a nine-story hotel with 349 rooms and 25,200 square feet of meeting space, some of it on balconies overlooking a 320-acre man-made lake.

And five miles west, Sunset Station earlier this month opened 3,200 square feet of new meeting space, bringing its total to 7,900 square feet.

By the end of next year, those two projects and others should add 90,000 square feet of meeting space to the roughly 70,000 square feet available as of earlier this summer.

Conventions at the Hyatt Regency, Lake Las Vegas, which opened 41,000 square feet of indoor meeting space in December 1999, account for 65 to 70 percent of resort business, said Robert Purdy, marketing director.

"We built this resort with conventions in mind," Purdy said. "We're attracting groups that didn't necessarily consider Las Vegas before."

The number of Henderson hotel rooms built to accommodate the new meeting space has jumped from 300 to more than 2,400 in the past five years, according to convention bureau records. By 2006, Jolley has said, she expects 17 proposed projects to more than double that -- to more than 5,000 rooms.

But none of those rooms are planned within walking distance of the downtown convention center.

It's been that way since 1982, when the city built the convention center, Jolley and others say. Today, between two nearby budget motels, there are just 75 available rooms within a short walk.

"The examples are a hundred-fold in Las Vegas where people built where no one wanted to build before," Tait said. "But I expect there's not the same feeling about central Henderson today. There will be, soon. Just not today."

Until the city can attract a developer for a downtown hotel, the convention center plans to focus its efforts on attracting more consumer shows such as the Americana Indian show held earlier this month.

Similar shows attracted 54,600 attendees last year, 29 percent of the 188,000 visitors for the year. Meetings, whether of church groups, Weight Watchers or quilters, attracted the majority, at 52 percent. Social gatherings, such as weddings, accounted for the remaining 19 percent.

"The consumer shows offer us an affordable venue for the community and they generate more traffic to downtown Henderson," Andrea Primo, marketing director for the convention center, said.

Still, city convention and redevelopment staff are also working to bring more out-of-towners to downtown Henderson to boost businesses.

Two new events have brought in the off-road racing and classic car crowds.

The first Kool Super Run car show brought in an estimated 65,000 people over four days earlier this month, crowding downtown restaurants that often are quiet on weekends.

"It was running very well in the car show. It was better," said Marco Molina, owner and manager of Dos Potrillos restaurant. "We had more people, about twice as many."