Officials plan for increase in visitors

The successful pursuit of ever larger conventions already has Spokane officials thinking about what new facilities might be needed to accommodate visitor traffic in 10 years.

Spokane Convention Center General Manager Johnna Boxley said representatives from the Public Facilities District and Convention and Visitors Bureau will meet with a consultant, architect and others next month to renew a planning process that led to the July 2006 opening of the Group Health Exhibit Hall and other facility improvements.

Planning for that $75 million expansion began in 1997, she noted.

“It doesn’t happen overnight,” Boxley said, adding that officials want to be sure that whatever expansion is undertaken will meet convention and event needs anticipated by the hospitality industry.

“The last thing we want is for them to build something we’d never be able to sell,” said CVB President Harry Sladich, who presided at the organization’s 2008 annual meeting Wednesday.

But out-hustling cities like Phoenix and Oklahoma City for national conventions that attract 8,500 has put Spokane at a level where the convention facilities will have to offer more space, he said, and perhaps another hotel.

Although hotel bookings have slowed since August, advanced bookings indicate 2009 will be another good year for Spokane, Sladich said.

His concern, he said, is room rate reductions initiated by hotel owners worried about the potential for fewer visitors in 2009. Hotel revenues will suffer, he said, and along with them the CVB budget.

Sladich said the CVB operates on a $3 million budget and employs 25 – a number that has not increased in three years. The hospitality industry employs 10,000 and generates more than $800 million in revenues, he said.