A Push To Expand The Convention Center–Again?

Spending for a new convention-center hotel not enough for you? Then you’ll love another upcoming push by the visitor/convention bureau: expanding the convention center itself–again–by another 300,000 square feet. That tidbit’s revealed in D CEO magazine’s April cover story, a hard look at how effective head honcho Phillip J. Jones has been luring business meetings for the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau. Jones supporters like to say the DCVB’s on the right track, with hundreds of millions of dollars in projected future “room nights” stretching out to 2017–if we’ll just build that convention-center hotel. But skeptics including restaurateur Al Biernat say Jones is a “tourism” man lacking the inclination or the skill to curry large-scale convention biz. One fact they point to: hotel stays by Dallas conventioneers fell 25 percent between 2002 and 2008. The April D CEO hits Borders and Barnes & Noble newsstands later this week.