Fifteen years ago, Sally Goldesberry held her annual meeting at San Antonio's convention center while the facility was adding on space. She remembers that the experience was terrible. "Construction was going on right outside the building during an important luncheon, and there was so much noise no one could hear anything!"
Fortunately, times have changed. Nowadays, says the senior manager of meetings and exhibits for the Richardson, TX-based Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), planners needn't shy away from using a center that's under construction during their meeting. And she should know—she's coordinated several get-togethers during similar projects at other centers.
The ongoing building boom may mean that more planners must work around construction projects, but it's also resulted in more competition among centers, Goldesberry points out. "Today, convention centers have to make sure their customers don't have a bad experience, or they won't come back," she offers. "Accommodating the client is much more the norm today then it was back then."
Skeptical? You shouldn't be. Successful Meetings spoke to planners who recently held meetings during convention center expansions. Without exception, their gatherings went off with hardly a hitch.
Drill Team
Scott Lewis didn't need to be warned by center officials that his 2002 conference at the Austin Convention Center might face a bit more noise and dust than usual. "We're based in Austin," explains the special projects coordinator for the Texas Education Agency. "We did some hardhat tours and saw it coming."
"It" refers, of course, to Austin's massive expansion project, which doubled the convention center to nearly 900,000 square feet and added a headquarters hotel. While lesser planners would have worried that meeting in what amounted to a giant construction site might make a poor impression on guests, Lewis didn't sweat it.
"We spun it in a positive way," explains Lewis, whose conferees—4,000 school administrators from across the state— gather in Austin every year. "We'd outgrown the old center, so we told [attendees], 'This is our last meeting in the old space, and the construction will make for a better conference in the future.' "
Although the expansion did cause some congestion in the neighborhood, Lewis says that overall there was hardly any impact on his meeting. "It was noisy outside, but inside, the noise didn't bother us, and our attendance wasn't affected at all," he notes. "Our attendees took [the situation] in stride—they didn't even mention it on our evaluation forms."
In fact, Lewis adds, there was a positive side to the minor discomfort: "Seeing the progress being made on the project actually made our attendees more confident" about meeting there in the future, he observes. Indeed, when the TEA returned to Austin the following year, the educators were rewarded for their patience with brand-new, stadium-style seating in the general session (previously, they'd been consigned to folding chairs on a flat surface) and bigger breakout rooms—not to mention an 800-room Hilton just across the street.
Chickening Out
For conventions that take place during a building's expansion, how the project affects the meeting is much less important than how the facility's staff responds to complaints, believes Don Dalton, president of the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association in Tucker, GA. Dalton, whose January 2003 International Poultry Exposition brought 19,000 attendees to the Georgia World Congress Center's Halls B and C while the latter was still being completed, admits that the situation wasn't always ideal. But GWCC staffers "tried to solve our problems immediately," he adds. "It's the sense of urgency from the building folks that matters."
For instance, when Dalton objected to the unfinished traffic area between the two halls, GWCC staffers solved the problem creatively—by covering the bare concrete floor with a red carpet runner, which they festooned with signs reading, "This way to the International Poultry Exposition." Other unfinished or unsightly areas were quickly painted or hidden from attendees' eyes behind curtains or temporary partitions. Meanwhile, construction crews ceased all work during show hours so that there were no noise disruptions.
Even one potentially major problem—unsealed doors that were letting in drafty air—got corrected within two hours of the show's opening, notes Dalton. "I think attendees could tell the construction wasn't quite complete, but I didn't get any negative remarks," he says. Since his association is a long-term Atlanta client—it's met in the city for 57 years, the last 25 at the GWCC—it's no wonder the convention center worked so hard to make sure Dalton didn't end up with egg on his face.
It's A Gas
For a clear indication of how accommodating convention centers have become, look no further than the Society of Petroleum Engineers' conference last fall at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver. In sharp contrast to SPE planner Goldesberry's experience in San Antonio fifteen years ago, the Denver center's expansion project "had no impact" on her 50,000 attendees, she says, other than the fact that they had to use an alternative entrance. "There was no noise and we saw very few workers," she adds. "In fact, you could hardly tell [the center] was under construction."
To keep things running smoothly, Goldesberry recommends that planners holding a meeting during an expansion communicate frequently with center staff about the construction's progress. They should also meet regularly with the project managers overseeing the work, she adds: "Make sure they know you and your group, and seek assurances that the impact on attendees and exhibitors will be minimal." In other words, detail those assurances in your contract, along with terms of restitution if the assurances are not met.
As for Goldesberry's ill-fated, long-ago San Antonio conference, it was the only time when construction at a center negatively affected one of her meetings, she says. Moreover, all is forgiven now. "We've gone back to the San Antonio center several times since then," she says. "They've redesigned their new wing, and it's a wonderful facility."