Not enough business for Tampa Convention Center? Double its size and folks will come, a $147,000 study says.
By MARK ALBRIGHT
Published December 17, 2003
TAMPA - A feasibility study laying out the economic benefits of doubling the size of the Tampa Convention Center is based on a big assumption: that another hotel the size of the 714-room Marriott Waterside will be built within walking distance.
"That's our chicken-and-egg dilemma," said Paul Catoe, president and chief executive of the Tampa Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau. "We don't get the added hotel space unless we create the demand for it by expanding the convention center."
The assumption was discussed briefly Tuesday when the Hillsborough County Tourist Development Council got its first look at the $147,000 convention center study it paid for. Supporters of expansion will huddle Thursday to plan their next moves before trying to build a political consensus for the project next year.
While the existing center is operating well below capacity, the study concluded that spending $102-million to $327-million to double its size would bolster the downtown hotel industry's ability to stimulate demand by creating space to stage bigger conventions or multiple meetings at peak times.
Tampa's 279,000-square-foot center is considered a medium-sized facility among convention centers nationally. The study found that a 300-room Embassy Suites hotel recently proposed by an Indiana developer could be supported by demand generated by the existing convention center across the street.
How to build a second headquarters hotel the size of the Marriott is not addressed in the study. The Marriott Waterside was privately financed, but a third of its construction tab was paid by the city of Tampa, and the city did not require the hotel to provide any parking.
The feasibility study says doubling the size of the convention center would increase tourist spending from the current $185-million to $304-million.
Expansion planning remains in the early stages. Proponents must narrow a list of nine proposed expansion sites to one. Then they would have to drum up support in 2004 for a source of tax money to bankroll the project. All options are politically ticklish. One idea - raising the resort tax on hotels bills from 5 to 6 percent - would require an act of the Legislature. So would a new tax on restaurant sales that a few proponents have suggested. Several proponents said one of the consultant's suggestions, selling the existing center and building a new one twice as big across the street from the St. Pete Times Forum, was dead on arrival.
The consultants from KPMG LLP also said three of the options, which would require filling in some of the Garrison Channel with dredged bay bottom, would require permits that might prove difficult, if not impossible, to obtain.
