The Music City Center. Like LP Field and Sommet before it, it's the newest Big Project Nashville Can't Live Without.

For more than a decade, business leaders have salivated at the thought of the proposed downtown convention center, a 15-acre Demonbreun widescraper to complement SoBro's mix of high-rises and honky-tonks. Now, after 10 years of studies and commissions and commissioned studies about the studies, the table, it seems, is set. Nashville will get its pretty bouquet for $650 million—a figure that will approach $1 billion when you add in a city-owned hotel.

There's just one problem: Convention centers are a bad business. And they're only getting worse.

The decline began halfway between the completion of Fulton's Folly and the Titans' first snap, and continues now during the Great Recession. Not that anyone's noticed.

From Anchorage to Albuquerque, Waco to West Palm Beach, the motto has been build, build and build some more. Space is up, while attendance declines.

But if you listened to the center's cheerleaders, you'd think we were still living in the Golden Age. If we could somehow find a way to build it, they say, 3,000 jobs and a $700 million windfall won't be far behind.

It's a plan that's long on talk and short on proof. The only guarantees: It will take a long time, cost a lot of money and do a lot of good for contractors. But it may also end up being the greatest blunder in Nashville history.

Diving in the Kiddie Pool
What the city's saying: If you've ever spent an afternoon in a honky-tonk, you've seen the name-tagged conventioneers, those affable out-of-towners plowing their way through Bud Lights and twirling the keys to the rented Ford Focus parked outside. Their kind is common to downtowns nationwide. But Nashville's share is low.

The problem: Our convention center is too small. At only 144,000 square feet, Mayor Karl Dean says Nashville's center can only compete for 20 percent of the available business. According to Tradeshow Week, the industry's scripture, our center ranks 161st in size nationally, behind hot-spots like Rapid City, S.D., and barely edging King of Prussia, Pa. It's a fact that Butch Spyridon, the 17-year president of the Convention & Visitor's Bureau, sees as a travesty.

"There are very few cities that have the leisure and meeting appeal," he says. "The industry just outgrew us."

To be fair, the industry had a head start. When the Nashville Convention Center, the city's first, came online in 1987, it was already outdated, running at capacity within years of opening.

And it's only gotten worse since, with an almost biblical flooding of the market. More than 160 new centers have been built along with 200 new expansions, including Opryland's 145,000-square-foot exhibition hall addition in 1996.

St. Louis, Charlotte, Louisville and Indianapolis—cities that, in the past, couldn't compete with Nashville—now sport bigger complexes. John Deere, the National Rural Co-Op, even the National Association of Music Merchants all left for greener pastures. At last count, the number of events Nashville has lost to those who can offer bigger and better stands at 270.

Enter the Music City Center. At 1.2 million square feet, it's an instant upgrade into the upper levels of the convention business.

Although it won't open until 2012, proponents insist the returns are already solid—the Southern Baptist Convention is on board for 2013, and Mayor Karl Dean insists the women's NCAA Final Four, scheduled for the following year, would've never committed had we not expanded.

Just as important: People will stop grouping us with all those crappier cities.

"We're better, we have more to offer," says Spyridon. "We like it when we compete with Orlando, Chicago, New Orleans and Atlanta. We fit into that category."

What's the city smoking? Exciting as that may sound, Spyridon's idea—that Nashville is a $1 billion-dollar rubber-stamp away from competing with the crown jewels of the industry—may be enough to qualify him for involuntary commitment.

The Music City Center may be three times bigger and a whole lot prettier. But to say our new 375,000-square-foot exhibit hall will be enough to compete with the big boys is an affront to simple math.

Chicago will still be seven times larger. Las Vegas will still have us by a magnitude of five. And we'll still be less than half the size of centers in Houston, Cleveland and Rosemont, Ill. (On the bright side: We'll finally have bragging rights over Gatlinburg.)

"Nashville is not, nor will it ever be, in the top tier," says Heywood Sanders, urban studies professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

To those in the industry, he's known as Dr. No. Twenty years of research has made him the leading independent authority on convention centers and given him a bearish outlook. His 2005 Brookings Institute paper "Space Available" is the Talmud for meeting industry skeptics.

Every day Sanders fields calls from across the country. When reached by phone, he's just hung up with a reporter in Cleveland and minutes away from talking to another in San Diego. And that's the problem—everyone's building.

Up until the 1990s, four major cities dominated the convention game—Chicago, New York, Atlanta and New Orleans. Then came two emergent powers, Las Vegas and Orlando. Then came the flood.

Thanks in part to the growing tech industry, convention business boomed in the '90s. In 1996, the Tradeshow Week 200, a listing of the top conventions in the country, surpassed the 5 million mark in attendance for the first time.

In response, everyone, including regional players like Baltimore, Indianapolis and San Jose—cities that lacked tourist magnets like Disneyworld and Mandalay Bay—made their bid for national dominance. Since 1990, the amount of convention space has increased by 60 percent.

Unfortunately, bigger has not meant better. Attendance has fallen steadily since the peak in '96. Last year the Tradeshow Week 200 topped out at under 4 million, the first time that's happened since Bush the Elder was in office.

What remains is a violation of the most basic of market principles: Supply vastly outweighs demand. That's created discounts worthy of the dented-can bin at Bi-Lo.

In 2005, Nashville didn't lose the Mennonite conference because the Anabaptists were offended by the abundance of sin on Lower Broadway. They lost because Charlotte agreed to give them the space for free, a common tactic in a world where meeting managers have all the leverage.

"It's a buyer's market," says Sanders.

Where once the industry was tall and deep, it's now spread so thin it's hard to attract enough business to get your ankles wet. This is the kiddie pool Nashville will be diving into.

Cooking the Numbers
What the city's saying: Still, to hear proponents talk, sitting this arms race out isn't an option. "I almost think it'd be irresponsible of us not to do this," says Mayor Dean.

In 2006, the Music City Center Coalition predicted a new center would bring in 1 million tourists and $700 million in spending per year. The figures were supposedly backed up by the University of Tennessee after then-Mayor Bill Purcell, famously tepid about the deal, asked to run them again.

"Nobody has questioned the need," says Spyridon. "It had the most critical eye possible, which was fine with us because we didn't inflate any numbers."

What's the city smoking? Nashville didn't have to inflate the numbers. They were already fraudulent to begin with.

Predictions like the one made by the Music City Center Coalition are based on the Holy Grail of convention economics: attendance. If you can figure out how many people will come to your city, you can figure out how much they'll pump into the economy using an equation that takes into account how many nights they'll spend in a hotel, how many meals they'll buy, and how many nickels they'll drop in some sidewalk troubadour's open guitar case.

Unfortunately, the meetings industry has long been self-policing. Which means the people who counted attendance and set these equations had a very strong interest in making them seem as impressive as possible.

Take the annual BookExpo. At the turn of the century, the publishing set's yearly soiree claimed a crowd large enough to fill LP Field. But as the convention tab for cities got bigger, so did the desire for real numbers.

Exhibition Audits, an independent commission, began counting attendees in 2006. Lo and behold, the numbers began to magically deflate.

BookExpo's attendance is now half the 65,000 it once claimed. The same trend plays out for the National Hardware Show, the PGA Merchandise Show and nearly all of the dozen or so events tracked by Exhibition Audits.

Worse yet, the new accounting blew holes in the industry's economic projections. In the past, convention cheerleaders peddled figures that automatically assumed every attendee was spending three nights at Loews, running up ticker-tape tabs at the Stage, and calling for no fewer than a dozen drunken Yellow Cab rides back to the hotel.

What they failed to consider was that a huge portion of these attendees were daytrippers, those who drive in at breakfast and leave by sundown, with only a Big Mac's worth of business conducted.

Last year, the International Restaurant & Foodservice show brought over 13,000 to the Javits Center in New York City. But over half came from inside the state. Same goes for the motivational speakers meeting at McCormick Place in Chicago. And when the Spa & Resort Expo met in Los Angeles last year, 95 percent of attendees came from California.

"Obviously we don't know how many of these people are staying overnight," says Sanders. "But it makes the numbers that much harder to believe."

Playing Small Ball
What the city's saying: Big conventions are nice, but they're not our target. The police chiefs, librarians, saddle-makers of the Southeast—these are our people.

Part of the pitch is that Nashville has prepared for a shift in demand. We could have built a bigger ballroom, the theory goes, but instead opted for more meeting space. This means we can do two shows at a time and don't have to rely on the big trade events to pay the bills.

"A lot of cities go for size," says Spyridon. "One of the distinct decisions we made was that we didn't want to be the biggest; we wanted to be the best. It never was the space race for us."

What's the city smoking? It's smart to say we're not going after the big fish. After all, with roughly a quarter the square footage of Las Vegas, and without the baccarat, Nashville isn't equipped to offer a big enough tank.

But that doesn't mean Las Vegas will leave the lesser business to Nashville.

"You may say you're not going to compete with them," says Sanders, "but the reality is Las Vegas will compete with anybody it wants to. Because they and most of the other large centers argue that what they want is more small and medium-size meetings."

In other words, ours is not an original idea. Quality over quantity has been an industry-wide mantra since the turn of the century, when the tech bubble, 9/11 and business consolidation all had a hand in shrinking the biggest events.

"This is the trend," says Sanders. "So you can say, 'We're not going to compete with them.' But that doesn't guarantee that anybody is going to come (to Nashville). It just means that you're going to have a smaller center because you can't afford anything bigger."

Precious Little Snowflake
What the city's saying: But Nashville is special.

We've got the Grand Ole Opry, the Country Music Hall of Fame and the symphony. We've got the Titans, Sounds and the Preds. We've got the Ryman, Prince's Hot Chicken and a city-dividing river that only occasionally smells of paint thinner.

Three major interstates cross our path. Southwest flies here cheap. And if trends continue, pretty soon downtown will officially be declared a No-Hobo Zone. Most important: We've got a brand.

"Nashville is Music City," says Mayor Dean. "Everybody wants to come here!"

What's the city smoking? Sure, Nashville has a brand. But so do a lot of other cities.

If you're not a country music fan—which statistically means perhaps 80 percent of the country—Miami, New Orleans and Orlando are a bigger draw. And that's just in the Southeast. Add in New York or Los Angeles, San Francisco or Boston, and numerous cities elsewhere, and Mayor Dean is sending Music City to scrap with the big kids. It's a fight in which we're woefully outmanned.

For one, convention centers almost never run in the black. Debts must be paid. In big tourist towns, that's done using the healthy bankroll of a hotel tax, meaning they can offer the low, low prices we just can't match. When you're competing against comped tickets to see Celine, the 24-hour bacchanals of the French Quarter and South Beach, or the stomach-in-your-throat drop of Space Mountain, a Jo Dee Messina show simply won't measure up.

All Aboard
What the city's saying: The easiest way to sell something is to make a list of all the people on your side. The logic: If smart guys think it's a good move, it'd be silly to go against it. And since convention centers mean money for all the top players in town—from the business elite to construction unions—it's not difficult to line up an impressive list of backers.

"I don't think there's ever been a project in the history of the city that had formal endorsements from 35 separate organizations," says Spyridon.

So they do what they do in every other city: commission the ubiquitous accountant's study that says a new center is a license to print money. Nashville's, conducted by the firm KPMG, claims ours will bring in $225 million and 3,000 jobs by 2012.

What's the city smoking? Consultant studies are the backbone of any hard-sell. They also have a history of being wildly inflated, providing faux scientific cover for those who pay for them.

The problem stems from the incestuous relationship between cities and consultants. If Nashville wants a convention center, the consultant's job is to create numbers that support that wish—if he wants to keep getting hired. "You lose clients if you shoot down projects," one confessed to Forbes.

"It's a good business," says Sanders. "All they have to do is attach a large number to a judgment that they already know people want them to say."

The examples are everywhere.

Before Washington, D.C., expanded in 2003, a consultant predicted the new center would generate 1.2 million hotel room stays per year. So far, it's done about 300,000.

A market study for the Boston center predicted nearly 400,000 room nights in its first year of operation. It booked less than half that.

St. Louis is the gold standard for hyperbole. Coopers & Lybrand predicted a 1993 expansion—followed by the construction of the Edward Jones Dome—would bring in more than 800,000 additional attendee days. Four years later, the actual number barely edged over 200,000.

Faced with a losing hand, St. Louis doubled down. In 1999, the city approved the $265 million, 90 percent publicly funded, 1,000-room Renaissance Hotel. But by the time it opened four years later, the market had already shifted. The city's Spyridon-equivalent promised 50 shows annually but only booked an average of 23. This January, bond holders foreclosed on the hotel.

"What happens in lots of cities, and it's going on in Nashville too, is the argument is made that you need a headquarters hotel of sufficient size next door to make the center work because meeting planners want a headquarters hotel," says Sanders.

But big hotel chains like Marriott and Hilton know better than to risk their own money on fictitious stats. Which forces cities to build them, then lease them to a hotelier. The hotelier gets a brand new building, but the city's on the hook when things inevitably go bad.

"The hotel firm signs a 15-year management agreement, and they put their name on the outside and their 800 number and website up," says Sanders. "But they don't own the hotel and they don't have any financial exposure to it. (Nashville) will be there before too long."

No Time Like the Present
What the city's saying: In a downtime, invest in yourself.

"You have to have some faith that the economy is going to improve," says Spyridon. "Now is when you need government, not when the economy's roaring. By the time we open the doors, by all historical evidence, you're gonna be on an up cycle."

Greg Adkins, vice-chair of Metro Council's convention committee, agrees: "This is like Nashville's version of the stimulus.

What's the city smoking? It's a great motto. Unfortunately, it sounds half-baked when, in only the past three months, the mayor's office has closed a battered women's shelter and Nashville's only adult literacy center, threatened to reduce library hours and proposed a 10 percent budget cut for all of Metro, including police and fire.

"We're down to the bone," says one department head who didn't want to be identified. "All that's left are people."

Even industry giants are acknowledging that you shouldn't build when you can't afford basic services. Earlier this year, both Las Vegas and New York halted long-planned expansions. By the time the Music City Center is complete, regional competitors like Indianapolis and Dallas will have spent nearly $2 billion on new centers and hotels. And just because we've paid off the current center doesn't mean it makes sense to go on a spending spree.

"When you pay off the note on your car, you're in that golden period," says Councilmember Emily Evans. "You can't have an automatic reflex to go out and buy a new car."

There's also reason to believe that what we're seeing now isn't just a down cycle. It's a death rattle.

"I've been in this business almost 30 years," says Spyridon, "And the demise of this industry has been projected at least three times. First was teleconferencing. Then the Internet was gonna take us out. Then, after 9/11, no one was gonna wanna fly. It's grown significantly every time. It has weathered every economic downturn."

But the post-9/11 recovery never happened. Attendance numbers keep sliding. And in the meantime, budgets have grown tighter and industry consolidation has made for a smaller world.

The National Hardware Show is a top-10 draw. But that meant more when mom-and-pop stores were around. Now, with the number of buyers shrunk due to the Lowe's-Home Depot-Wal-Mart hydra, there are fewer attendees willing to justify a plane ticket to check out the latest belt sander. In 1999, the show counted more than 67,000 attendees. Last year, less than 15,000 showed up.

"It may be the case that things will be wonderful in Nashville, and I will somehow be proven wrong," says Sanders. "I don't think so, but it's possible."

Email channan@nashvillescene.com, or call 615-844-9410.