City officials back report on convention center

Jeffrey Libby

Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2003 | 9:40 a.m.

Until new construction takes root on Water Street, the downtown Henderson Convention Center should focus its efforts on accommodating residents who attend events there but sleep in their own beds the same night, city officials said last week.

Their comments supported an eight-month, $80,000 study that cautions against expanding the convention center in any attempt to compete with nearby private resorts and instead suggests limiting the market reach of the 13,800-square-foot center to the Las Vegas Valley.

The final report, issued Dec. 11, largely upholds a draft report released in October.

Five years from now it may be worthwhile to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to upgrade the facility, said convention center board member Tom Tait -- but not today. Tait is vice president of Lake Las Vegas resort, which opened 41,000 square feet of convention space in 1999 and plans to open another 25,000 square feet this coming spring. "As soon as the new City Hall gets done, that's going to be the spark that ignites the renaissance downtown," said Tait, referring to an ongoing $65 million expansion that will quadruple the size of Henderson City Hall by late 2004.

"There's huge potential and that whole area is going to become very valuable real estate. But right now it's just scattered businesses and a few banks."

Less than two years ago, with the Henderson hotel and convention market booming, city convention center officials were talking informally of building a high-end facility and possibly expanding the city's target market, which at that time reached as far away as Salt Lake City. Some of that optimism was based on a 1998 study that recommended expanding the center to help revive downtown businesses.

But though the hotel and convention market continues to boom, the talk now is of partnering with city redevelopment staff and city parks and recreation staff so that city-sponsored events in the downtown complement, rather than compete, with one another.

In its report, Clarion Associates says the center has always operated more as a community center than as a convention center, catering to locals rather than tourists. Officials have attributed that focus in large part to the lack of a nearby hotel to house would-be conventioneers. The center opened in 1982.

"Now we will be more of a supportive entity, rather than a business," said Lisa Jolley, executive director of the convention center and visitors bureau.

Rather than giving first priority to national, regional or state corporate meetings that fill hotel rooms as in the past, the priority will go to civic functions, Jolley said. Much of the $10,000 that went to advertising outside the valley -- about 25 percent of the annual budget -- will be joined with the $30,000 spent on local advertising, Jolley said.

In 2001, the convention center's total budget of $1.8 million was 1 percent of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority budget of $180 million.

Emery Childress, chef-owner of a downtown Italian restaurant, said orders from the convention center generate only a small portion of his total business, but said they have increased dramatically since he moved to Water Street this spring.

He was drawn downtown, he said, by the city's plans to build new office space that would bring more professional workers into his bistro for lunch. He hopes those plans progress beyond mere talk soon.

"If they took a section of the convention center and focused on weddings, did some serious wedding theme, that would draw more people," he said.

"They already have all the furniture. It'd just be a matter of trellises and floral. They wouldn't have to spend too much money."