An Unconventional View

The terrazzo floor in the Broad Street atrium is under way, and carpet is being laid in what is touted as the largest ballroom on the East Coast. Streetscape, including curbs and sidewalks, has been added on 13th, Arch, and Race Streets, with work just starting on Broad.

Construction of the massive $786 million expansion of the Convention Center is 93 percent complete and on track for an early March unveiling, said Joseph Resta, project executive for the Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority.

Perhaps most visually striking is the nearly finished glass curtain wall that wraps around the building. Of its more than 3,500 panes, only a bit more glass on the south end of Broad remains to be installed.

"So you can have beautiful, daylit spaces," Resta said during a tour Friday. "You have a large window into the ongoing fabric of the city."

That glass curtain, said Meryl Levitz, president and chief executive officer of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp., "reinforces the . . . importance of playing up one of the building's main strengths" - the city itself.

"The beauty of the building and its inviting design will give people a sense that they are in a good place well worth exploring while they are here for a convention, and well worth coming back to as visitors," Levitz said. "We call this last part 'convention conversion.' "

About $2.5 billion in business already has been lined up for 2011 and beyond, according to the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau, which is in charge of booking space in the bigger facility.

"We've recently hosted 13 site visits of upcoming conventions, and we have four new pieces of business coming in for sites in the next month," Jack Ferguson, the bureau's incoming president, said last week.

Circulation corridors and entranceways contained within the center's glass-enclosed atriums along Arch and Broad Streets aim to draw conventioneer and tourist alike out into the city.

"You're connected to it, feel the pulse of it," Ferguson said.

Both the existing center and its expansion are built out to the sidewalk, unlike convention venues in such cities as Chicago and Boston.

For example, Ferguson said, Reading Terminal Market is at street level within the Convention Center: "Inside, you are with meeting attendants, tourists, and residents. You get the feel of a vibrant city, and you want to be there."

And outside, the Broad Street entrance sets up the Convention Center District with the Avenue of the Arts and what Ferguson has dubbed "the cultural boulevard of North America, Benjamin Franklin Parkway."

"The Convention Center is so close to what all we sell: the shopping area, the theater district, and cultural district," he said. "There is no other street in America that has that curb appeal, with the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts on the western side of Broad connected to Lenfest Plaza on Cherry Street.

"When you make a right, you are on the cultural boulevard, with the Academy of Natural Sciences, Franklin Institute, the Barnes Foundation [which opens in 2012], Rodin [Museum], and the Philadelphia Museum of Art."

When it makes its anticipated debut in early March, the enlarged Convention Center will be the 14th-largest in the United States, behind centers in Chicago, Las Vegas, Orlando, and Atlanta, but ahead of New York.

And it will open in what is shaping up to be a more favorable convention and meetings environment despite continued economic uncertainties, according to the U.S. Travel Association.

The pendulum is swinging back, the travel association says: Statistics for this year show business-travel spending up 6 percent compared with 2009; business-travel volume is up 4 percent, and meetings/convention spending is up 7 percent from a year earlier.

Forecasts for 2011 will be available in two weeks.

"In recent months, soaring corporate profits and strong cash reserves have meant that companies have begun to relax their travel restrictions and allow their existing employees to get out on the road more," said Roger Dow, president and CEO of the trade group, which represents the $704 billion U.S. travel industry. "The corporate folks are saying, 'We have been on the sidelines as long as we can, and we have to go back out there.'

"They have a lot more cash than a year ago in their coffers," Dow said. "They are saying to their folks, 'You can go to the conventions and the trade shows.' This is the beginning of a long pullout of this . . . and there is nothing on the horizon to tell us differently."

The expanded Convention Center will feature 83 meeting rooms, as well as more than a million square feet of sellable space, contiguous exhibit space totaling 528,000 square feet, and the new 55,400-square-foot Terrace Ballroom with its curved, accoustic ceiling.

As of last week, more than $520.5 million in contracts had been awarded on the expansion project and 1.43 million hours of work performed, according to Resta.

On Friday, about 450 workers on-site during the day and an additional 30 on for the night shift fanned out over eight acres stretching from 13th Street to Broad, from Arch Street to Race, pressing full steam ahead. Resta said they were working six days a week.

A 12-color carpet was being laid on the Arch Street corridor, and crews prepped stairwells for painting. They finished stone on the elevators, drywall in the exhibit areas. They hung ceiling grid and installed aluminum column covers.

Weather is no longer a factor since all that's left is interior work, except for the streetscape, Resta said. But the pace of the work has not eased up.

If anything, it's accelerated.

"The last 10 percent is kind of frantic and hectic," he said. "This is the playoffs."

And less than 10 percent to go on this particular project is "still bigger than most jobs," Resta said.

Just as big as the expansion are the stakes involved: Up for grabs are 280,000 additional hotel-room nights, with $140 million in economic impact per year, and 18,700 additional jobs, with $1 billion in economic impact after the expansion opens.

Hospitality-industry observers say the expansion will allow the Convention Center to hold larger conventions and handle simultaneous medium-size gatherings and events requiring large amounts of exhibit space, such as the Philadelphia International Flower Show and the Auto Show.

Up to now, the center has been unable to do that because of a lack of space.

"Here," Ferguson said of the new space, "you have expandability by 62 percent from an east location, heading west to Broad Street."

"It's a magnificent building," he said, "and complements the original building."

The new Broad Street atrium soars 115 feet high with floor-to-ceiling glass offering stunning views of the city's architecture and City Hall. At the very top are engraved the words, PENNSYLVANIA CONVENTION CENTER.

"You could have just put a box there," said Ferguson, "but since it's in the center of the city and plays such a vital role in the ambience of the city, it had to have a statement."

With that vast expanse of glass, he said, "It now becomes the 'wow.' "