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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

$200M wanted for convention centre

Aging facility needs upgrade to stay in race

By: Geoff Kirbyson

Posted: 01/6/2011 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

“We’re going to be outgunned and pushed to the margins of the landscape in the convention centre business, there is no ifs and buts about it’ — Klaus Lahr, Winnipeg Convention Centre general manager

When the Winnipeg Convention Centre was christened in 1974, it was a ground-breaking, state-of-the-art facility that established the Manitoba capital as a go-to destination for annual meetings and other major corporate events.

Thirty-seven years later, the aging building has been surpassed by newer facilities in a number of cities across the country and is under siege from several more.

Klaus Lahr, WCC president, said the situation has reached the point where without a major upgrade to the downtown landmark, Winnipeg risks falling off the radar of Canada's convention and exhibition sector altogether.

"We're going to be outgunned and pushed to the margins of the landscape in the convention centre business, there is no ifs and buts about it," he said.

The WCC has 78,000 square feet of exhibition space and another 80,000 square feet for meetings. But Lahr said a total of 280,000 square feet to cover both purposes will be required for Winnipeg to reclaim its current No. 5 national ranking, which it stands to lose this year when Ottawa and Niagara Falls unveil new convention centres.

He said Winnipeg trails Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Quebec City in the convention market, with Edmonton, Calgary, Fredericton, Regina and Saskatoon also nipping at its heels.

Such an expansion would cost about $200 million, including $33 million for renovations and upgrades within the current WCC facilities.

While that figure may seem high to some, it pales in comparison to the $500-million price tag associated with constructing a new convention centre.

Ottawa just rejected a request for funding from the P3 Canada Fund, money reserved for private-public partnerships, for the proposed expansion. However, the federal government is encouraging the non-profit organization to try again this spring.

As much as conventions and exhibitions are associated with tourism, they're crucial elements of a city's economic development, according to Chantal Sturk-Nadeau, senior vice-president of Tourism Winnipeg.

"Conventions contribute to the health of our downtown economy by filling hotels and bringing incremental spending (to the city's core), but they also trigger new incremental investment in hotels, parkades and shopping," she said.

"Expansion of the Convention Centre is critical for Winnipeg to remain competitive as a tier II city."

Investment begets further investment, she said, because it creates the perception that the city is on the move and that financiers will receive a good return on their money.

The No. 1 need in Winnipeg, Sturk-Nadeau and Lahr both agree, is an internationally-recognized, high-rise hotel.

If the three levels of government can't agree on funding the expansion of the WCC in the short term, millions of dollars will flow out of Winnipeg each year, Lahr said.

"We'll lose 25 per cent of our business," he said. "We won't be able to find anything to replace it with because we'll be too small, competition will have increased and we'll lose our market position," he said.

Trouble is already on the horizon, he said, as the WCC is projecting $9.5 million in revenues this year, down from $10.8 million in 2010.

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca

The benefits

While convention delegates might look like regular tourists, they could hardly be more different from a financial point of view. Chantal Sturk-Nadeau, senior vice-president of Tourism Winnipeg, said the 50,000 delegates that come to the city each year spend four times as much as other visitors -- about $270 per day or nearly $1,000 for an average three-and-a-half day convention.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 6, 2011 B2

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