Downtown convention center may finally happen

David Cameron: Potential state earmark is a catalyst for project to advance.

Bruce Adib-Yazdi: Consultant price tag was a "high, high estimate."

Gordon Elliott: Timeline proposed is "tall hill to climb" for hotel development.

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After decades of discussion and four consultant studies, momentum for building a downtown convention center is at its apex, in part because of potentially $30 million in funding from the state of Missouri.

Springfield City Manager David Cameron believes the state earmark is a difference maker that could get the convention center off the ground.

“The governor putting $30 million in the budget is the catalyst that drives that particular project, but without the funding, I think it’s a big stretch,” he said.

Cameron made his remarks during Springfield Business Journal’s 12 People You Need to Know monthly interview series, held July 16.

The $30 million earmark is in the form of restricted funds, which can be activated by Gov. Mike Kehoe at his discretion and must be matched by the city. Kehoe described the process of restricting funds as protecting the state’s long-term financial health.

Upon signing the budget on June 30, Kehoe stated he understood the value of the 32 restricted budget items, and that is why he did not veto them.

Chicago-based consultancy firm Hunden Partners Inc. recommends a $175 million convention center with an attached $209 million, 400-room headquarters hotel – something the report cites as essential to the project’s success.

The convention center – which is being referred to as an event center for its potential to host local functions in addition to conventions – would likely be built on city-owned property downtown, with amenities, including other hotels, within walking distance.

For the project to come to fruition, Cameron said, the community needs to come together.

“We need to demonstrate as a community that we’re committed to going towards that project and doing what we can to allocate funding,” he said of Gov. Kehoe. “That’s a big piece that’ll help determine whether we move forward with the project.”

But the city is not waiting for that decision to be made, Cameron said. Instead, it is proactively working on engineering, architecture and timeline, while also making sure it can move at a quick pace.

“It’ll take a large effort from a lot of people,” Cameron said. “There’s a lot of interest in the community that want to participate and help with the project; there’s an energy and eagerness from the staff.”

The city essentially has a year to spend the state funds plus a one-to-one match – $60 million total – or the funds will be subject to the reappropriation process.

“To find $60 million worth of expenses within the first 12 months or six months could be a challenge, so there’s a lot of work to be done on it,” Cameron said.

Additional funding
Cameron said the city’s Economic Vitality department, under Director Amanda Ohlensehlen, is identifying financial pieces on the table, like use of a community improvement district, changes to the city’s lodging tax, tax increment financing planning and more.

At a City Council luncheon June 15, the use of the city’s lodging tax – currently set at 5% – was briefly discussed, with the clarification by city staff that city code does not place a cap on the amount of tax that can be levied. That is one avenue for possible funding, and it’s one that other cities have employed for their convention facilities.

Cameron said during his remarks that the city is looking at myriad possibilities.

“It’s a large project, but there’s a lot of resources that want to help us see this come together,” he said.

Cameron said money follows trust, and the project has the potential to drive economic development.

“I think it has a lot of ancillary pieces that come with it that will actually help the economy – not only locally but the regional economy,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of investors around the city’s investment and the state’s investment.”

The state support will help generate buy-in from investors, according to Cameron.

“I’ll tell you something else with outside dollars and investors: When they see the state partner, a city partner, it draws other investors to the table, rather than just asking for investors to pay for it all,” he said.

Council support
At a luncheon meeting July 15, Mayor Jeff Schrag took the temperature of council and heard no objections to moving ahead with the project.

At the luncheon, Councilmember Bruce Adib-Yazdi said council should move forward.

“There’s absolutely an opportunity in front of us,” he said, adding the city does not want to miss the opportunity for $30 million in funding from the state.

Adib-Yazdi added, however, that there is a matter of urgency to the next steps, particularly if the city is looking to deploy its own property for the project.

Other council members voicing support were Brandon Jenson, who said he would like to dig in more to the ongoing operational costs and the right structure for handling those.

Councilmember Callie Carroll said she would love to move forward.

“It’s a huge, huge opportunity for not just Springfield but our region,” she said.

Councilmember Craig Hosmer also said he definitely supports the plan.

Councilmember Monica Horton said council should examine the fiscal impact of the city managing the property versus it being farmed out to a third party. She called it a sticking point in the conversation moving forward.

“Our municipality is very well capable of managing a project like this, given the fact that we manage other types of public property and amenities that those who visit our city take advantage of, but also those who reside here,” she said. 

Convention center expertise
Springfield City Council members bring a mix of relevant expertise to the project, as it turns out, with members including lawyers, an engineer, a banking professional, a city planner – and an architect with experience building a convention center.

As vice president of The Vecino Group, Adib-Yazdi headed up a downtown convention center project in Ithaca, New York. It was a smaller project than the one proposed for Springfield, at 50,000 square feet, and the 11-story center also featured 181 affordable apartments, part of that city’s efforts to address homelessness. It also included a parking garage.

Adib-Yazdi called the project his biggest and most complex, with three interrelated components, each with its own funding source and its own set of stakeholders.

“I felt like I trained my entire career to manage the complexity of the project that we had executed in Ithaca,” he said.

Vecino responded to the request for proposals for the project in 2018, and the $100 million project opened last year. The convention center comprises the first three floors of the building and includes a ballroom, breakout rooms, prefunction spaces and a commercial kitchen.

“It’s not as big as the one we’re proposing here, but in all other terms, it’s the same project,” he said.

Adib-Yazdi said he is eager to sit down with the city team – including Economic Vitality, the city manager and council – and share how Vecino structured the project, what went well and what the pitfalls were so Springfield doesn’t have to start everything from scratch.

“My comment so far has been, ‘Hey, coach, put me in; I’d like to be part of the conversation,’” he said. “I want to make sure we don’t have to recreate some things I may already have access to.”

His institutional knowledge covers aspects like planning, scheduling and general expectations, he said.

Asked if it is possible to finish a conference center and hotel project by 2028, a target set by Schrag, Adib-Yazdi said yes, and he brought receipts. While he was working with BRP Architects, that company designed and built a Renaissance Hotel – part of the Marriott brand – and a media complex for a stadium being built in Glendale, Arizona, for the Cardinals football team.

“BRP Architects, Killian Construction and the Hammons team designed and built the full-blown Renaissance Hotel and media center in just over 12 months,” he said.

The most important step, Adib-Yazdi said, is for the team to define exactly what it wants – something design professionals refer to as the program. That includes aspects like number of rooms, type of kitchen, size of meeting spaces and ballrooms and the like.

“When Ithaca came to us, they knew exactly what they wanted,” he said. “They didn’t have the walls laid out, they didn’t know where the kitchen went, but they knew the functionality they needed, and we came back with how we would approach that.”

The city’s job now, separate from timeline and funding concerns, is to define what it wants and then discuss how to achieve it and what it’s really going to cost, Adib-Yazdi said.

He added that he has some doubts over the convention center cost cited by the Hunden Partners, $175 million.

“I think that was a high, high estimate,” he said.

The Ithaca project cost less than $1,000 per square foot, but the consultant estimate for the Springfield project, with 125,000 square feet of total function space, is more like $1,400 per square foot, he said.

As for the proposed timeline, a 2028 finish, Adib-Yazdi said his initial thought is that the city might want to give the project a little more time instead of pushing it through.

“Everyone’s asking for answers,” Adib-Yazdi said. “The answer is we have some work to do.”

Hotel portion
Springfield hotelier Gordon Elliott, who owns Elliott Lodging, said the 400-room hotel portion of project is doable in the proposed time frame, but likely at a cost.

“You’d have to overpay somebody,” he said. “Somebody will drop everything if you throw enough money at them.”

The Hunden report estimates the cost of the hotel portion alone to be $209 million, more than the $175 million pegged for the convention center.

Elliott said completing the hotel portion of the project by 2028 would be challenging. He figures it could take that much time just to get started.

“That’s a real tall hill to climb,” he said.

That said, Elliott called the project one worth doing, and he agreed with the report that a brand like Hilton, Hyatt or Marriott would be well suited to do it. He noted, though, that it could be hard to convince them to take on 400 units – a large number. By comparison, he pointed to the Hilton Promenade at Branson Landing, which has 242 guest rooms.

Elliott said what is likely is that a major hotel brand will agree to a much smaller property – but if they agree to build a headquarters hotel that is smaller than the 400-unit target, the city can likely accept that.

That negotiation is the hard part, according to Elliott.

“Whatever the brand is, if you can convince them, they’ll get somebody to do it – that’s probably the easy part,” Elliott said. “Maybe somebody’s already done it.”

Visit Springfield, Missouri, President and CEO Mark Hecquet said in a news conference following the July 8 announcement of the report that there is interest in the hotel portion of the project.

Having the city behind the project will help, Elliott said, and he added that a lot of good people are working on it.

“It’d be good for Springfield,” he said. “I’m not going to throw water on something. The city is coming together with things downtown there, and that’s been everybody’s hope for 40 years.”