Center Of Focus

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Up from the ashes of Pasadena’s former premier meeting place, a new convention center has risen and will play a role in boosting the city’s travel and tourism revenue.

The $150 million project started with razing the old building. The new one is double its size, and offers a new 60,000-square-foot exhibition space and a 25,000-square-foot ballroom. The facility, next to the Pasadena Civic Auditorium and a conference hall, opens in March.

The Pasadena Convention Center will be a draw for groups looking for a meeting space for events of about 3,000 people near downtown Los Angeles.

That number can’t fill the Los Angeles Convention Center, but groups of that size may not want to hold conventions at smaller halls in Long Beach and Santa Monica because of their distance from Los Angeles and Hollywood.

“The L.A. Convention Center is large, and sometimes its size for a medium-size group is a little intimidating,” said Michael Krauss of the L.A. Convention and Visitors Bureau, which operates the L.A. venue. “And Long Beach, while in L.A. County, is a little further away from downtown and other regions.”

Even though the L.A. facility has smaller halls to accommodate groups of that size, the campus is “just too intimidating,” Krauss said. He often refers small groups to Santa Monica and Long Beach, and will now recommend they consider Pasadena.

More than 50 groups have already booked events for this year at the Pasadena Convention Center, including the California Police Chiefs Association, which will inaugurate the conference hall March 1. (An official grand opening is scheduled for April 3.)

Michael Ross, chief executive of the Pasadena Center Operation Co., said the new venue is generating buzz among organizations that are looking to meet in the Southern California region.

“We now will have a convention destination that will allow a state association type of business to look at Pasadena as opposed to Ontario, San Diego, bigger L.A. hotels and Long Beach,” said Ross, who oversees the Convention Center, Civic Auditorium and the Pasadena Convention & Visitors Bureau. “We are now going to be a competitor.”

In addition to the larger exhibition hall and ballroom, the Convention Center offers 28 breakout rooms for small-group activities and private meetings, and 3,000 parking spaces.

Pasadena’s hotels and restaurants are also expecting a boost from the thousands of people attending the conferences, trade shows and company meetings that will be held in the city.

“We are in hopes that it will bring some more business for 2009,” said Mike Owen, director of sales for the 314-room Old Pasadena Courtyard by Marriott. “But we are also looking ahead to 2010 and beyond.”

Some are more skeptical about the amount of business the new facility will actually generate in the current economic climate, which is forcing companies and consumer trade show organizers to scale back or cancel their events.

“The trade show industry is going to be hit like any other industry, and attendance for business-to-business shows is going to be down,” said David Brull, director for the Association for Exhibit and Event Professionals in Chicago.


Pasadena renaissance

Lara Chanley, a spokeswoman for the Santa Monica Convention & Visitors Bureau, said that city’s two event sites, the Civic Auditorium and Barker Hangar at the airport, don’t compete with other convention centers in Los Angeles because groups are specifically attracted to Santa Monica’s proximity to the beach.

“Our big focus is incentives for meeting in Santa Monica,” Chanley said. “We have the beach, world-class dining a lot to offer on that side of things.”

The opening of the Pasadena Convention Center will complete a revitalization of city facilities, after renovations to City Hall, the Pasadena Central Library and police headquarters. Nearby, a mixed-use development at a Metro Gold Line stop has also contributed to the renewal.

Construction on the Convention Center began in 2006, after Pasadena officials agreed that the 33-year-old building was beginning to show its age.

“The original building was built in the 1970s, and it was time to have a new center,” Ross said. “There was a need to upgrade the facilities to be competitive.”

The new Convention Center was designed to complement the classical renaissance design of the neighboring Civic Auditorium, which was built in 1931. The conference hall was remodeled to match the new building.

Ross said the center was retrofitted to include energy-efficient amenities, including HVAC climate-control systems. And, 75 percent of the new building was built with materials that were part of the original Convention Center.

“It’s a needed element to help support those hotels in Pasadena,” Krauss said. “And if they are busy in Pasadena, it creates pressure and compression for business in other parts of the city.”

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