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As it looks to wrap up a second consecutive record-setting year, the board of the Savannah International Trade & Convention Center is turning its attention to the consideration of several strategic initiative designed to keep the successes coming.
“This has already been a milestone year for us,” board chairman Mark Smith said Wednesday. “Not only have we continued to grow in terms of conventions, room nights and economic impact, we signed a management contract with the Georgia World Congress Center that will help us continue moving forward.”
Next on the agenda, Smith said, is the reissuing of a request for proposal for a new convention hotel on Hutchinson Island and a discussion on when — and if — to expand the current Trade Center building.
A previous request for proposal for a convention hotel, issued in 2010, resulted in the Chatham County Commission engaging in a development agreement with Hutchinson Hotel Holdings for a controversial, government-backed convention hotel.
Over the years, the project became increasingly political, with opponents concerned about the risk to county finances and unfairness to private hotel developers.
In March, the commission allowed the agreement to expire.
Smith said a new convention hotel is needed, and the environment for that kind of investment has changed radically since 2010.
“It’s the right time to look at this again,” he said.
While a number of hotels have either opened recently or are under construction, most of them are small, high-end boutique properties that are geared primarily to the leisure or individual business traveler, according to board member Joe Marinelli, president of Visit Savannah.
“These hotels don’t cater to convention business,” Marinelli added.
An expansion of the Trade Center building could go hand-in-hand with a new hotel, Smith said, as the Trade Center, in partnership with the Georgia World Congress Center, seeks to attract and accommodate larger groups.
Trade Center executive director Bob Coffey offered an anecdotal example of the need.
“We have a group that has been here with an international conference several times,” Coffey said. “This last time they told us they couldn’t come back. It seems having the conference in Savannah created such a demand, we now don’t have enough hotel rooms or exhibit space to accommodate the numbers.
“If we do our job well and create a greater need, we should be considering how we are going to meet that demand in the future.”
Trade Center sales and marketing director Fredia Brady, in her report to the board, listed a cancellation of another international conference representing more than 3,000 room nights because attendees would have to be spread over at least nine different hotels here versus three hotels in Atlanta.
Coffey offered three possible expansion scenarios for the board’s consideration. The most ambitious would double meeting space, exhibit space and add another ballroom for approximately $150 million. The second scenario would double exhibit space and add a smaller ballroom for $90 million, while a third proposal would increase exhibit space by 50 percent while adding a second ballroom and eight additional meeting rooms at a projected cost of $50 million.
Any parking structures that might be needed would be additional, he said.
While the proposals are very preliminary, Marinelli encouraged fellow board members to take a hard look at the potential benefits such an expansion could bring.
“This is not only important for keeping the business we already have, it’s key to expanding our customer base,” he said.
Smith indicated the Trade Center would lean on the expertise of its new management partner, Georgia World Congress Center, as it moves forward.
“This is not their first rodeo,” he said. “They have expanded and grown their facility many times. We certainly plan to leverage that relationship.”