Part of the problem is that exhibitors, who put on public events like the annual auto show as well as trade shows for the restaurant industry and other constituencies, are pushing for more floor space for exhibitions. But hotel owners believe that they need more meeting rooms to attract conventions of professional associations.
“You have a conflict between the users who do not use meeting rooms and the hotel association, which wants new customers who want more meeting rooms, and when you try to do both, you come up with a $5 billion plan,” said Dan Gutman, a West Side resident who devised a plan with the Hell’s Kitchen Neighborhood Association that would have moved the convention center over the West Side rail yards. (That idea was not embraced.)
Mr. McAvoy, who is a member of a group of exhibitors called Friends of Javits, said that the current Javits, if merely renovated, would be insufficient to hold onto even the trade shows that it currently hosts, let alone attract new ones. He said that exhibitors asked the ESDC to come up with a plan that would increase exhibit space to 1.2 million square feet, from about 750,000 today, and add about 170,000 square feet of meeting and ballroom space.
He said that the state could save money by cutting down expensive meeting-room space and by shrinking the truck-loading area. ESDC officials said that they would revisit the plan with an eye toward coming in under $2.5 billion, Mr. McAvoy said. Exhibitors expressed their willingness to pay more to stage shows there in order to pay off the extra bonds that would need to be issued to cover the cost overruns.
“We thought that the $3 billion or $3.5 billion was not something that we could live with,” Mr. McAvoy said. “It gave us too many meeting rooms and not enough exhibit space. We didn’t even look at the $5 billion plan because we thought that was not realistic.”
Mr. McAvoy said that hotel owners were mistaken in believing that New York City could attract professional conventions, because room rates are much higher than in competing cities.
“Hotels think they are going to attract all of these associations to New York, and they are not when you look at $400- or $500-a-night hotel rooms,” he said. “It is twice as expensive as Chicago and three or four times as expensive as Orlando.”
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