Monday, June 1, 2009
Around Town Thoughts from the Music City Center Debate
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 6:47 PM
It was as if Vince McMahon had occassion to put a John Stossel impersonator in the ring with Allen Tate. I was watching the whole thing through my fingers for fear a duel would be declared or fisticuffs would ensue or someone would get beaned with a laptop and I didn't want to get pieces of whatever was sure to come flying in my eye.
It didn't quite come to that, but the audience had to be told to behave itself and each side accused the other side of lying at least once and the woman in front of me hissed once when Austin (Texas, not Steve) was mentioned.
The problem with the whole thing was that, since both sides were busy grandstanding, both got to skim over the two main issues that sit at the heart of the matter.
One, the current convention center is not adequate. Even if we intended to add no new convetions to the Nashville calendar, you can't efficiently and effectively run a convention center with no kitchen, no ballroom, and only five loading docks. And we will lose the convention business we do have to places that have the amenities we need.
So, something has to be done. Money is going to have to be spent. So, at this point, we need to be talking about the most effective use of our money--do we remodel our small convention center or do we build a new one?
But the second point that went completely without saying is that Downtown doesn't need a new convention center to compete with Orlando or Toronto or Branson or White Plains. Downtown needs a new convention center to draw meetings downtown to get meeting attendees walking around downtown and spending their money because right now, Downtown's biggest competition is sitting in the middle of Pennington Bend.
When people come to Nashville for meetings, if those meetings are at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center, folks can't just stroll downtown over lunch or duck into a downtown coffee shop between sessions or get drunk at our bars at the end of the day and stumble back to their hotel.
If they're out there, they can walk to the mall or to the Opry. Otherwise, to get into the city takes some effort. And if they just took a shuttle from the airport? Forget about ever seeing revenue from splurges they might make downtown, because they aren't coming downtown.
This is not a new fight. Nashville has always had an uneasy relationship with Gaylord, who is both responsible for realizing the value in keeping Nashville's cultural heritage alive and for building an inconveniently located self-sufficient fortress designed to keep tourist dollars firmly flowing into its pocket.
The question is not how to lure meetings and conventions out of Orlando, but how to lure them out of Donelson and into the downtown without pissing off Gaylord. But it's a question no one is asking in public.
Comments (14)
Showing 1-14 of 14
Ok. I'll go first. Aside from the fact that this post happened fully 24 hours after the conclusion of the "debate," this was a fairly -- dare I say it -- interesting and informative read. And not confusing in the least.
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Well, the current Nashville convention center does have a ballroom, as does the Opryland convention center, and I don't know about the kitchen but every event I've been to at the convention center has had food so they've managed to bring it in somehow. And if the way they've brought it in is for some reason inadequate it should be an easy fix. If the current ballroom is too small, then it can't be too hard to make it bigger.
And your second point brings up another issue: if the problem with downtown is that Opryland is not in it, then why the hell are we talking about building May Town Center, which would just repeat the same mistake?
Downtown needs to thrive separate from the tourist industry. It's already quickly becoming a place that locals never, ever go; if we have a hockey game or concert to attend, we eat elsewhere. We never go downtown to shop or do business of any kind. A thriving downtown cannot be a tourist attraction, or it will fail.
The real story out of Sunday's forum, which the local press seems to be having a hard time grasping, is the presentation by Sanders of hard evidence that numbers and facts being used to justify and promote MCC are cooked and contrived to build a misleading and intellectually dishonest case for the project. The fact that the forum got a little testy is an interesting sidebar, but it's a distraction from the central issue of how this thing is being framed and pitched. B apparently thinks this is somehow all about Opryland vs. Downtown. Also a distraction. Beale has it right: this is really about what kind of city and what kind of downtown we want to have irrespective of the volume of conventioneering urologists wandering into lower Broad honky tonks -- a critical question, but a conversation that those who are pushing this project are not particularly interested in having.
Now, now, bb, let's not put words into my mouth. My broader point was that the whole debate has been intellectually dishonest and that real things that the public needs to consider haven't been openly stated--the current convention center is going to need some money spent on it one way or another and that the downtown folks would love to have foot traffic that comes to our city right now come downtown.
These aren't the only issues and I wouldn't pretend they are. I merely think that they're issues that are being glossed over for various reasons.
I am actually in agreement with my esteemed colleague, Caleb, that at this point, because of the bond market, the thing's not happening. At least not for a while.
And I think that's okay.
I'm not sure how important this point is to the debate, but Gaylord has, not one, but two attractions in downtown Nashville and they regularly transport their customers downtown to squeeze as much revenue out of the convention guest as possible. So, actually, Gaylord conventioneers are able to stroll around downtown just about every evening. And depending on the type of convention, that's just about the only time anyone would have a chance to get outside the center anyway.
Just sayin'.
Betsy,
I think you have hit the bulls eye with point #2. Butch wants to suck Opryland's business downtown.
If it were about bringing traffic and families downtown the political class would have pushed for and built a downtown minor league ballpark. This group (Dean, Butch and Schultz)have done everything possible to kill the Minor League ballpark and grease the skids for the MCC.
Move Gaylord Opryland downtown where the Convention Center is planned to go.
Problem solved.
So we p/o Gaylord? BFD. They p/o'd the city when they closed Opryland. Didn't we just give them a welfare check of 85 million to improve their convention facilities and also to hush up their opposition to MCC?
There used to be water taxis that regularly went between Opryland and downtown, why can't they run again? O yeah, keep the money there, not downtown.
Someone else made a good point. Locals avoid downtown: parking and traffic hassles are a major reason. Plus, why go downtown and eat and drink when there are plenty to spots close to home.
I was thinking the water taxis were killed because of concerns over bank erosion.
And yes the payoff to Gaylord was done to prevent them from leading a rebellion of other non-downtown hotel and motel owners who were being asked to collect unreasonably high taxes for something that would eventually compete with them. The MCC proponents have seen how these fights have gone in other cities and determined that a payoff was the easiest thing for everyone.
Unfortunately looking at the experiences of other cities who have gone down this same path stopped at the quashing of rebellions. The operations results of these centers compared to promises and expectations is something we are not allowed to look at since you will be labeled as someone who was "...brought in to try to derail this project." You sure don't want to be labeled as a non-team player in this mayor's system.
Ty, I agree. The lack of making the ballpark come together and then the mayor's bizarre waffling on the riverfront park (though that appears to be back on track I believe) PLUS the fact that you have to pay for parking just makes it more and more difficult to come up with reasons for local Nashvillians to hang around downtown.
If I ruled the city and had unlimited resources, I would a.) make free parking downtown for folks with Davidson county plates and b.) bring back the water taxis (because, with my unlimited resources, I would find a way to combat bank erosion).
B, the riverfront park is back on track in the sense that Dean is now saying that he'll get to it in the recommended order. But he's also saying that he'll devote $1 million to the whole riverfront thing, which isn't enough to get to any of the recommended steps. Of course, part of the reason he only has $1 million is the $70 million of the city's money he's devoting to buying property downtown for a future convention center, so it's not as if there's much left over for real projects that could be worked on now.
I don't think the issues are Opryland vs. downtown but more the size conventions each can handle. Opryland is now SOL - they've expanded the hotel as much as they can on the ground they've got because the ground won't support a multi-level parking lot. There are lots and lots of conventions that would come downtown if the center there was larger than what we've already got in either location.
So we p/o Gaylord? BFD. They p/o'd the city when they closed Opryland. Didn't we just give them a welfare check of 85 million to improve their convention facilities and also to hush up their opposition to MCC?
Not to mention Metro writing off the naming rights to the (f/k/a) Gaylord Entertainment Center for a few years until Sommet finally ponied up. That was worth several million in losses to the local taxpayer. Does Metro ever do a favor for Gaylord that's worth less than $1M?
PLUS the fact that you have to pay for parking just makes it more and more difficult to come up with reasons for local Nashvillians to hang around downtown.
No joke. Surveying the area of the proposed Convention Center from this perch, it appears that they'll be plowing the Landport under in order to site the darned thing.
Is that supposed to help the already dismal state of affairs for parking hereabouts? With the other couple of SoBro developments, in addition to the Schermerhorn, it's not like real estate devoted to easily accessible public parking is a growth asset.
I think one of the major reasons stated for the closures of NASCAR Cafe and Planet Hollywood was the accessory parking toll (and the inconvenience of where that parking was located relative to the establishments).
I read with interest Heywood Sanders opinion piece and also attended the debate.
Mr. Sanders has an ideological opposition to convention center construction of any kind, which is certainly his prerogative. However, I am bothered by a number of conclusions that he states as fact that simply don't hold up under a closer look. I was also struck that when citing data sources, when data supplied supports his point of view, the source is unimpeachable, yet when the same source supplies data that supports the opposing view, he claims the research is flawed. It seems to me that this alone should call into question many of his key points.
Let's address some of his assertions from the article and meeting yesterday specifically:
In the Tennessean article, Sanders cites 4 examples of convention center expansions to support his theory. Below is a comparison of existing space in those centers prior to proposed or actual construction:
Washington State Center,307,000 Sq'
San Diego, 2.6 million square feet
Pennsylvania Center, 624,000 sq '
Brown Center, Houston, 1,150,000 sq'
Nashville, 180,000 sq'
Comparisons to these cities defy logic. In every instance cited, there were existing centers with adequate space. I agree that these cities may have overbuilt to compete with major market venues. We need a center sized to compete period. The obvious point is that our existing center was undersized the day it was opened. Not only do we know of conferences that have passed on our city because of insufficient space and the unsuitability of Gaylord Opryland for a particular program (and there are many), we have a number of city wide events that historically met here which have left our city because our facility was inadequate. It seems to me that using these particular examples in comparison to the situation in Nashville does less to demonstrate an objective reporting of fact than it does to prop up a biased point of view.
Certainly, due diligence must be performed in this economic environment. Yet, I am troubled by the fact that data sources used to support Mr. Sanders' point of view seem to be cherry-picked, and based primarily on one survey, the Tradeshow Week 200.This source ranks the 200 largest tradeshows in the U.S. and the 50 largest tradeshows in Canada based on net square feet of paid exhibit space. Even if you support Sanders' viewpoint, let's look at the latest data from the Tradeshow Week 200 report released April 30, 2009:
"Despite the challenging economic times, 46% of TSW 200 shows experienced growth in net square feet, 40% had an increase in exhibiting companies and 36% boosted their attendance.
Nevertheless, after several years of overall growth, the top 200 shows of 2008 did experience some declines. The smallest drop of the three indexes was in net square footage, which saw a 1.6% decrease in 2008. The number of exhibiting companies fell 2% and attendance in 2008 suffered a 3% drop.
'Tradeshows are not immune to tough economic times, and resourceful show managers are using this as an opportunity to find new, creative ways to add value to their events,' says Dana Myers, Tradeshow Week's Managing Editor, Directories. 'Those who are successful will be the record-breakers of the future.'"
There you have it. That is the real story regarding the Top 200 trade shows. Not so bad when you look at the real figures in relation to the current economic climate.
Strangely, data figures on association meetings, corporate meetings and events, event marketing programs, and incentive travel are conspicuously absent from Sanders' position as articulated in his article or at the debate. His assertion that the global meetings industry never recovered following 9/11 is demonstrably untrue, and, really, do the comments he made comparing Nashville to Branson give you confidence in his understanding of competitive cites in general, and the meetings and events industry in particular beyond reading numbers on a page?
Look, I love this city and I obviously support the MCC. I also support every right to disagree. I just have a hard time accepting that after more than ten years of study, debate and due diligence that Mr. Sanders' biased and flawed logic adds to the conversation anything more than a sideshow distraction.
