Convention center gets $187M facelift

Orange County Convention Center Construction plans to span 5 years and cost $187 million

In the cavernous halls of the Orange County Convention Center, hard-hatted demolition crews are making a theme-park-sized mess.

They're ripping out lights as big as paint cans, smashing decorative facades and piling broken ceiling tiles along the dusty corridors of West Hall. The destruction warms the heart of project manager Kurt Kotzin.

"All that gingerbread stuff is coming down," said Kotzin. "It'll be a much more modern, open space."

The work is part of a five-year, $187 million renovation of the center, which has 2.1 million square feet of exhibit space. It's the facility's biggest rehab in its 30-year history, and it includes upgrades to everything from signs to roofing to cooling units.

The work is part of a continuous and pricey arms race among convention centers across the country. At $187 million, it is more than twice the cost of the new Edgewater High School, which opened in 2011.

Convention Center Executive Director Kathleen Canning said officials are responding to meeting-planner requests for upscale interiors and smaller, executive-style meeting rooms. University of Central Florida Professor Asli D.A. Tasci said that's crucial if a venue wants to survive.

"You've got to keep improving, refreshing, rejuvenating to keep the attention and interest renewed," said Tasci, of UCF's Rosen College of Hospitality Management. "Otherwise, a destination dies."

But Heywood Sanders, a professor of public administration at the University of Texas at San Antonio, has his doubts. Sanders, who has written extensively about convention centers, said communities routinely overstate the economic benefits of upgrades and expansions.

He said attendance at the center's trade shows and conventions the events most likely to bring overnight guests has hovered around 1 million for 15 years, even though the center added 950,000 square feet in 2003. Sanders said other convention centers across the country have had the same experience.

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Convention center gets $187M facelift