Posted Jan 5, 2026, 6:17 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2013
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Phoenix officials take step toward convention center expansion
Finally some movement/progress on this. Should know approach and next steps by March.
https://www.yourvalley.net/stories/phoen...oward-convention-center-expansion,642804
Quote:
Members of Phoenix City Council advanced efforts to expand the Phoenix Convention Center, including building an adjacent hotel, during a subcommittee meeting on Wednesday.
Vice Mayor Ann O’Brien, chair of the Economic Development and the Arts Subcommittee, requested city staff return in March with a presentation about next steps to take for the expansion.
Phoenix Convention Center Director Jerry Harper and Visit Phoenix President and CEO Ron Price reported the convention center is coming off a record summer, with the four largest events totaling 72,000 attendees.
However, they also detailed how many competing convention centers around the country have expansions funded and underway.
Councilmember Laura Pastor asked what would happen if the city does not follow suit in funding a convention center expansion.
“Cities will pass us up,” Price responded.
A particular weakness for the Phoenix Convention Center is the lack of hotel rooms near the center. Many companies view this unfavorably, Harper said, because it can bring the added expense of busing employees from the hotels to the convention.
A recent study from city staff found that an 800- to 1,200-room hotel is needed. However, Price said that estimate is outdated with how much demand for the convention center has grown, particularly with the success of Semicon West, a North American microelectronics exhibition, which Phoenix hosted for the first time in October.
“Our team would tell you we could use a lot more than 1,200 rooms,” Price said.
Semicon West will return to the city for 2027, and Phoenix officials hope to convince the convention to make Phoenix its permanent home, Harper said.
Visit Phoenix calculated the impact of the business the convention center lost from companies who listed lack of hotels as a reason to not host their event in Phoenix. They found 276 meetings and conventions were lost, accounting for 977,000 total attendees, 1.95 million hotel room nights and a direct spending of $1.5 billion.
However, Price did not mention if that business was lost or replaced by other meetings or conventions. Later in the meeting he mentioned he believes Phoenix has one of the highest occupancy rates for a convention center in the country, which makes it hard to schedule more meetings.
Harper noted the original South Building of the convention center, built in the 1980s, is only a single story, whereas the newer North and West buildings are several stories tall. He said an expansion could involve condensing the footprint of the South Building to be smaller but expanding the convention space by building vertically. The other portion of the property would then be used for a hotel that would connect to the convention building.
Another option Harper mentioned was a parking garage across the street from the West Building, which he said was probably not the best use for the property in the current business climate and could also be converted into a hotel.
Price said he is in constant contact with downtown hotel partners near the convention center who are eager to bid for one of the new hotel spaces.
“They are all waiting for this project,” Price said.
Harper brought up the most recent 2009 expansion of the Phoenix Convention Center, funded by both the city and the state. His staff calculated that without that expansion, the convention center would have had an economic impact since 2009 of $587 million instead of the $5.2 billion in actual economic impact the center has brought during that timeframe.
“It got us a seat at the table,” Harper said about the 2009 expansion. “And I think now we’re in a position, a unique position, to where we can move forward closer to the head of that table.”
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