Expo Center on target: Planners grapple with advance sales, air service issue

From her seventh-floor office in the John Q. Hammons Office Building, Cindy Reed can monitor progress of the Jordan Valley Park Exposition Center. As director of sales for the new attraction, Reed is on the phone, scouring the Internet and sending proposals to parties interested in the new space.

And then she waits.

Marketing a facility under construction is exciting, she said, but it requires patience.

"The seeds that we're planting today won't sprout until next summer and into next fall," Reed said.

As of yet, there is no new business slated for the Expo Center, though a handful of proposals are circulating with meeting planners around the country, Reed said, including the Missouri Republican Convention and the United Methodist Church Annual Convention.

Reed and CVB Sales Director Dana Maugans are targeting groups within a 500-mile radius of Springfield and those with 500 or more attendees a market Springfield has not fully tapped, Maugans said.

"Our job here is to bring group business into Springfield," Maugans said. "The Expo Center gives us a new venue to sell ... so we can get some other groups in, which before we could not get."

Grounded

However, some interested parties have reservations about committing to Springfield, noting a lack of affordable air travel and direct connections to the Springfield-Branson Regional Airport.

Expo center planners, such as Reed, are forced to target "drive-in" conventions.

Maugans agrees: "That's the one thing we hear from convention planners. What we are up against is that we don't offer the number of flights that some major hub cities do."

Alexis Brown, The Great Game of Business event planner, can vouch for that.

The National Gathering of Games, an annual event put on by Springfield-based The Great Game of Business and its founder Jack Stack, drew more about 350 business leaders from around the world April 30-May 2. But the business gamers were nowhere in sight in Springfield.

The executives and their hotel stays, airline flights and pocket books converged on St. Louis, Brown said. It's been 10 years, she said, since the National Gathering of Games was held in Springfield, and it's not due to lack of a venue.

"It's just so expensive for people to get into Springfield and hard that we had to move it to a bigger city," Brown said.

The group still holds monthly seminars in Springfield of about 25 people.

"From those people I've heard about the flight cost and trying to get in at the right times," said Brown. "Most of the people are coming from large cities and they're used to direct flights. We still, to this day, have people who fly into Tulsa or St. Louis and drive down."

Market demand

Springfield-Branson Regional Airport Marketing Director Sherry Wallace said airport rates and availability are based on the demands placed on it by the city.

"I'm sure that airfare and direct routing is an issue for some people. I'm sure there are a lot of contributing factors," Wallace said of event planners' reservations about coming to Springfield. "Springfield does not have a super-hub airport, and we're never going to. However, that doesn't mean it's not relatively easy to get here. We are in the center of the United States, we do have service to six hubs and it's usually just a matter of one connection to get here.

"Airfares are based on market demand. And when you're in a smaller community like Springfield and the predominant traveler is the business traveler, the airlines charge what they can get for a seat."

The good news is that the Expo Center may open up additional flights and carriers to the Springfield market, Wallace said.

However, it's still unlikely the Great Game of Business annual event will return to Springfield based on what the Expo Center offers.

"I'm looking for a spot in 2005 and I have not considered Springfield," Brown said. "We love Springfield and bring people here every month, but for that large number of people it's just really hard for us to get them all into Springfield."

The Expo Center might have better luck with Tracker Marine's annual dealer convention, according to Carey O'Bryant, Tracker's special events manager. O'Bryant said the event, which draws 1,000 people and displays Tracker Marine boats, is outgrowing Springfield's facilities. This year's convention is in Vancouver in July.

"We have a real high interest in that Expo Center when it gets up and running. Next summer could be a real viable opportunity to get back in (Springfield)," O'Bryant said.

The targets

CVB officials recently toured the city with about 16 planners representing 11 organizations from around the country. The tour touted the new Expo Center which can hold up to 6,000 people or 280 booths, as well as other venues and hotels.

The first event in the new facility a private meeting of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers that was already on the books is scheduled for Sept. 24. Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau Director Tracy Kimberlin said it will take up to five years before operations are "ramped up." The goal is to have events there 200 days per year, he said.

Religious groups such as the United Methodist Church and Church of the Nazarene, conservation groups including Missouri Forest Products Association and International Guild of Taxidermy, and other regional and national organizations saw firsthand what Springfield can offer, Maugans said.

Maugans said some planners have requested proposals.

Of course, the larger the events, the more revenue generated for the city. According to the International Association of Convention & Visitor Bureaus, convention attendees in a market the size of Springfield spend about $150 per person per day. The average convention length is three days. Based on those numbers, a convention of 1,000 people spends approximately $450,000 in Springfield on hotel stays, food, shopping and other expenditures.

While there is neither a projected economic impact nor sales tax revenue projections for the Expo Center, Louise Whall, Springfield public information officer, said the city is paying off the $12.5 million building with Convention and Entertainment Community Improvement District revenues that include state Tax Incremental Financing monies and business license and real estate taxes.

The CID revenue projections started at $405,500 in 2002 and peak at $2.07 million in 2024. Repayment is over a 25-year period, ending in 2027.

Competition

As Springfield is slightly more than four months out from a grand opening of the Expo Center and Jordan Valley Car Park tentatively scheduled for Sept. 20 Branson is awaiting approval from Gov. Bob Holden on Tax Increment Financing to fund its estimated $45 million convention and exhibition center.

City of Branson Communications Director Jerry Adams said the city would like to capture half the sales tax generated by the Branson Landing project, a private and public development comprising retail, restaurant and commercial space, two hotels, a boardwalk and an aquarium. A response is expected in the next few weeks, Adams said.

"The convention center hinges on that: no TIF, no convention center," he said.

Reed questions the need for a second convention center in this market.

"I definitely see competition because of the location," Reed said. "I feel like adding another convention center down there is duplicating the efforts."

Springfield and Branson already compete with Lake of the Ozarks as a convention destination, she said.