Critics say Austin Convention Center expansion project is not worth it

The Austin Convention Center | Wikimedia Commons/Ed Schipul/https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

By Vimbai Chikomo

Feb 5, 2020

Last November, a ballot initiative to require voter approval for any future convention center expansion and to use the revenue from Austin's hotel taxes to support cultural tourism failed. While industry leaders are moving forward with the expansion, a look at the attendance for events at the convention center in recent years shows that a previous expansion was not as profitable as the city had hoped.

Proponents for the most recent expansion bid claim the city is losing a substantial amount of money each year in revenue because the convention center is simply too small to host many events.

According to the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau, 130 groups chose not to host events in the city because the convention center was either unavailable or did not have adequate capacity to accommodate the event – a projected loss of $481 million in economic impact for the city.

City leaders are now advocating for an expansion that could cost the city more than $1.2 billion. Critics of the expansion believe the city will be better off spending the money on something else because the expansion project completed in 2002 failed to yield any tangible profits for the city.

In 1999, voters approved a plan to expand the convention center that C.H. Johnson Consulting had predicted would increase the number of convention and trade show events from 47 in 1996 to 98 by 2005. The consultant’s report also projected the attendance for those events would rise to 329,000 by 2005. Overall, the convention center was projected to host 478 events, which would draw 813,000 attendees by 2005.

The opposite happened, however.

By 2016, the number of convention center and trade shows dropped to 43 events, and attendance that year was 328,762 – lower than the projection for 2005.

KXAN Investigates took a look at attendance numbers for events over the past seven years and concluded that the numbers were about the same.

The 2015 report used to predict the impact of the current $1.2 billion expansion proposal shows that the convention center will only attract 215 events with an attendance of 702,768, leading many to conclude that it is not a worthwhile project for taxpayers.

The Austin City Council approved the most recent expansion proposal in May 2019.

All council members – Ann Kitchen, Leslie Pool, Alison Alter, Natasha Harper-Madison, Delia Garza, Sabino “Pio” Renteria, Gregorio “Greg” Casar, Jimmy Flanigan, Paige Ellis and Kathie Tovo – all voted in favor of the measure, as reported by the Austin American-Statesman.

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Austin Convention Center Attendance