June 2006
Reinventing a city
How three cities used mega-events to transform their destinations and what it means for future shows

 By Heather Kirkwood

Ask any CVB CEO, and they’ll tell you the competition for world-class exhibitions is tough. Show organizers have a plethora of choices, and every city offers a convention center, hotels, restaurants and attractions. But every once in a while something special happens in the history of a city that challenges a destination to stretch itself, pull together in new and innovative ways, and reach just a little bit higher to offer the very best the world has to offer.

When that happens, regardless of the catalyst, the exhibitions that follow are treated to a city operating at the top of its game – humming with excitement, activity, exciting offerings and a confidence that breeds excellent service on all levels, whether it be sorting out housing issues for a citywide show or assisting with arranging security for an especially demanding event.

That’s the story for three cities — Detroit, Houston and Salt Lake City — which took on the challenge of hosting a world-class mega-event, and all were so transformed by the process that, if you haven’t visited lately, you might not recognize them. For Detroit and Houston, the catalyst for radical growth was hosting the Super Bowl, and for Salt Lake City, it was hosting the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. For each city, these mega-events were not only a chance to gain new hotels and better infrastructure, they provided an opportunity to shine before the entire world and learn lessons they never knew they didn’t know. The beneficiaries of all that experience are the shows that come to these destinations today.

Houston
Before the Bowl: Like Salt Lake City, Houston was already destined for economic expansion, but landing the right to host the 2004 Super Bowl put the city’s plans into overdrive.

“Our biggest problem before the revitalization boom was capacity,” says Jordy Tollett, CEO, Greater Houston CVB (www.visithoustontexas.com). “We needed more space, more hotel rooms and more things to do downtown.”

The first spark, according to Tollett, was the decision to build a baseball stadium for the Houston Astros downtown. Then came plans for a light rail system, and then plans to expand Reliant Park, home of the Texans football team.

As plans began to take hold, the owner of the Texans lead the charge to bring the Super Bowl to Houston. As with Salt Lake City, the announcement in 1999 that the city had won the Super Bowl was the match that lit a firestorm of activity to get ready. Suddenly plans that had been designed to take years were to be compressed into a five-year window.

Building it big in Texas: The George R. Brown Convention Center doubled in size to nearly 1.2 million square feet of exhibition, meeting and registration space. A number of downtown hotels went up (including a 1,200-room Hilton Americas-Houston attached to the convention center), bringing the total number of downtown hotel rooms to 5,000, and the number available in greater Houston to 60,000. In fact, the city doubled its hotel inventory between 2001 and 2004.

The city completed a 7.5-mile light rail system that connects downtown to Reliant Park, home to Reliant Stadium, Reliant Center, Reliant Arena and the Reliant Astrodome (also all newly built or refurbished). The new Reliant Center added another 1.4 million square feet of exhibition and meeting space.

In all, the city accomplished $5 billion worth of public and private development in just a few short years.

Benefits for exhibitions: In many ways, hosting the Super Bowl was a warm-up for events to come, says Tollett. Not only has the city hosted a number of other large sports events, such as the 2004 Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game, the 2006 NBA All-Star Game and the Tennis Masters Cup in 2003 and 2004, but as the winds of Hurricane Katrina subsided, Houston found itself host to 250,000 guests — and not just for a few days. More than 100,000 people displaced by the hurricane are still in Houston. 
 
“Not only has our expansion put us in a whole new segment of the exhibition market, but because of all our city has done in the past few years, we’re confident we can handle anything,” says Tollett.

Salt Lake City
Before the Games: Turn the clock back to the mid 1990s, and Salt Lake City was a great destination. It offered a nice convention center and was surrounded by some of the world’s best outdoor entertainment. But Salt Lake City was due for redevelopment and had the image of a mid-sized destination known for skiing and the presence of the world headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS).

The city had bid for the Olympics before, but in 1997, its bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics was successful. It was official — the world was coming, and the city had to get ready. 

 “There would have been infrastructure development without the games, but being awarded the Olympics compressed development that might have taken us 15 years into five years,” says Mark White, Vice President of Sales for the Salt Lake CVB (www.visitsaltlake.com). White has a long history at the bureau and watched his city’s metamorphosis first hand.

Olympic transformation: The construction fury that ensued in Salt Lake City was staggering. The city expanded its airport facilities, rebuilt and expanded its freeway system, built a comprehensive light rail system, expanded the city’s convention space and increased its hotel room inventory by 64 percent. New shopping venues went up, and new restaurants opened.

The momentum didn’t end once the TV satellite trucks left town either. Since the Olympics, Salt Lake City has added a $6.6 million downtown Olympic Legacy Plaza, a new $80 million Salt Lake City public library building, the new Clark Planetarium and the Alf Engen Winter Sports Museum. The Gateway, a 650-acre and $375 million shopping and entertainment district in downtown, is still growing.

And there’s more growth coming. The LDS Church is investing $1.5 billion to upgrade 35 downtown acres near Temple Square. The upgrades involve revamping two older malls, both across from the convention center. The new mall will feature upscale dining, shopping and entertainment.

The Salt Palace is also undergoing yet another expansion that, when complete in July 2006, will bring the center’s exhibit space up to 550,000 square feet and the number of meeting rooms to 65.

Benefits for exhibitions: “Practically everyone in our city’s hospitality industry — from the bellmen at the hotels and the restaurant owners, to the staff at the CVB and convention center — learned something from the Olympics that we carry through to what we do today,” says White. “We tend to be a town people move to, not away from. A lot of that knowledge is still here because we don’t have a lot of turn over.”

For example, the director of security at the convention center during the Olympics remains in his post today. And security at the 2002 Olympics was more than tight following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Security at the convention center, which housed more than 10,000 working reporters during the Olympics, had to work with the legions of law enforcement that descended on the city. Not only did the security director gain the experience of overseeing such a massive security operation, the Salt Palace still boasts security infrastructure that’s up to any special event’s security needs. “Security cameras were installed everywhere in 2002, and they’re still there.” says White.

White says that the Olympics brought together the Salt Lake City community and built a cohesiveness that still persists today, making it easier for the bureau to respond to special needs that exhibition clients might have.

More than 30,000 local citizens took three weeks away from their jobs in 2002 to volunteer in various ways to assist visitors. “They couldn’t just volunteer for a few days — it was a solid three weeks,” explains White. Not only are those volunteers well trained, but also the bureau still has a database of the volunteers who can be called back into service to help with special event needs. “We can come together to make things happen,” he says.

Detroit
Ready for some football: Detroit is one of the newest members of the club of cities to host a destination-altering mega-event. Just this winter, the city hosted the 2006 Super Bowl – an opportunity the CVB took advantage of with military precision. Like the other cities, development was in the works, but landing the Super Bowl accelerated existing plans.

The CVB was well aware Detroit suffered from an image problem. People who hadn’t seen the city in years, if even at all, tended to think of it as an old industrial town, run down and cold. So, as city planners set about economic development, the CVB executed a careful plan of image development.

Making over the Motor City: From the day Detroit learned it would host the 2006 Super Bowl on Nov. 1, 2000, the city was working on a countdown clock — t-minus 1,921 days and counting. And in those precious days, more than $1 billion in downtown economic development took place, from Ford Field and Comerica Park to hotels, restaurants and new shops.
General Motors invested $500 million to develop Renaissance Center — home to its new global headquarters. Another $500 million in development is taking place, which includes a network of parks and walking paths, and new cruise ship terminals near the GM headquarters.

Hundreds of retail shops and new urban residential development opened in converted 1910-era buildings. New side-by-side stadiums for the Detroit Tigers and the Detroit Lions anchor the entertainment district. The Northwest Airlines WorldGateway terminal was added at the Detroit Metro Airport, adding 100 more gates. A second terminal should be completed in 2007.

And as city leaders were busy building, the CVB was busy schmoozing. They knew that more than 900 million viewers — all possible future tourists or event attendees — would tune in to see the Super Bowl. So, early on, the CVB cultivated key media contacts — whether it was holding special meetings with local media to keep them informed about development and win their buy-in, or hosting influential sports writers and TV personalities who would be responsible for Super Bowl lead-up coverage, as well as coverage of the actual event.

It worked. Between 2002 and 2005, the bureau estimates its efforts generated 480 million media impressions. In the weeks after the first of the year to the actual game, the bureau estimates it received 233.3 million impressions (excluding international coverage) via 624 broadcast stories and 1,265 print stories.

And as game day approached, the CVB had plenty of other things to do. They initiated a citywide education offensive reaching out to everyone from restaurant workers, to hotel workers to even holding a charm school for cab drivers. “We had to get everyone on board,” explains Larry Alexander, CEO for the Detroit CVB (www.visitdetroit.com). “We educated the entire city about what this event meant to Detroit, as well as the events that would follow.” The bureau also recruited and trained 10,000 volunteers to work information counters and patrol the streets in search of visitors in need of directions or other help. 

Benefits for exhibitions: Detroit is fresh off its Super Bowl experience so just how the experience will alter what the city has to offer will play out in coming years. Already, however, exhibitions will benefit from the revitalization and infrastructure improvements.

Alexander points to other ways shows will benefit. The city’s public relations efforts, for example, have gone a long way to educating potential attendees about what makes Detroit a great destination. The city’s hospitality community is well practiced at what it takes to host a large group — from coordinating housing and security to a new pool of volunteers who can be called into service once again.

They can point to several examples of how everyone pulled together to rise to the occasion — such as the labor and management at the Cobo Convention Center that managed to tear down the North American Auto Show and move in the NFL in seven days.

“The Super Bowl has truly raised the importance of the tourism industry in our community,” says Alexander, “And now we’ve proven that we can pull the complete package together — the infrastructure, the volunteers, the security, the logistics, the media — we can do it.”

Heather Kirkwood, Senior Editor of EXPO, has written about the exhibition industry since 1997. In 2005, Kirkwood and the EXPO team won Folio’s Eddie Award for editorial excellence and min’s B-to-B Best Web site Redesign Award. She can be reached at (913) 344-1376 or hkirkwood@ascendmedia.com.

Sidebar: 10 cities in the midst of major redevelopment