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Philly swings from Dems to Chems, as the DNC ends and a chemists' confab begins

What Democrats? That was so Thursday night. Friday was the big move-in at the Convention Center for Sunday's start of the annual meeting of the American Association of Clinical Chemistry.

Workers set up at the Convention Center for the American Association of Clinical Chemistry’s annual meeting. It will start Sunday and continue for five days.
Workers set up at the Convention Center for the American Association of Clinical Chemistry’s annual meeting. It will start Sunday and continue for five days.Read moreDAVID MAIALETTI / Staff Photographer

What Democrats? That was so Thursday night.

Friday was the big move-in at the Convention Center for Sunday's start of the annual meeting of the American Association of Clinical Chemistry.

Dems to Chems, with the Chems due here for five days.

The AACC, with 18,500 attendees, is the second-largest show booked for the whole year, just behind the DNC.

The group's leaders had to agree to push back their gathering, originally scheduled for last week, so the city could accommodate the Democratic National Convention, now being dismantled around town.

Participants are expected to spend, collectively, 27,172 nights in hotels and have an economic impact of $39.8 million, the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau estimates.

All week, even as political caucuses were meeting in one part of the Convention Center, stagehands, laborers, and others have been gradually shifting another part of the building from a forum for politics into one for chemistry.

On the agenda for the five-day conference?

Presentations on cannabis-use research, the programmable bio-nano-chip, and the "intelligent" surgical knife fill the calendar, along with a session intriguingly titled: "Oral Fluid in the Clinical Toxicology Laboratory: Ready for Prime Time?"

"These overlapping, citywide conventions are pumping a tremendous amount of money into the city," said Michael Barnes, who leads IATSE Local 8, the stagehands union.

"A big challenge for us is shifting the focus to the AACC," Barnes said.

Even though the DNC dismantling at the Wells Fargo Center had already begun by 10 a.m. Friday, when 450 stagehands were expected to report to the Convention Center, Barnes said the Convention Center has to be the focus.

"The DNC will be here and gone, but the chemistry show will spawn a lot more business," he said.

To set up the Democratic convention, the stagehands dispatched more than 200 workers to the Wells Fargo Center during June and July. During the convention itself, a smaller crew of stagehands - about 50 - stayed to maintain operations.

That freed some crew to begin to assemble the chemistry convention.

"This is just what was the building was designed to do - one goes out and another comes in," said Julie Coker Graham, chief executive of the CVB.

From Sunday to Wednesday, trade union members at the Convention Center worked more than 8,892 hours. On Thursday alone, 430 men and women worked for more than 3,500 hours to both dismantle the DNC event and continue the setup of AACC.

"Our planning for the transition between the DNC and AACC is complex and began as soon as the conference dates were set," said Lorenz Hassenstein, general manager of the Convention Center for SMG. "The ability to perform at such a high level is a tribute to our partners and all the progress made in the last two years.

"The center is doing an amazing job for these back-to-back blockbuster events, which allow the Convention Center to continue supporting, and growing, the 67,000 jobs in the region's hospitality community."

A key element, Coker Graham said, was cooperation between the two conventions and the building's staff.

Even though the Democrats had access to the entire building, they agreed to use only the meeting rooms and banquet space, allowing the chemist organizers to set up in exhibit halls, Coker Graham said.

"I can't say enough about the fact that they worked with us, because they didn't have to," she said about the chemists.

They "had every opportunity to go to another city. There were a lot of cities that would have liked to have them, especially in the summer," when the convention business typically slows.

The AACC convention was last in Philadelphia in 2003. The group has booked two more conventions here - in 2019 and 2023.

jvonbergen@phillynews.com

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@JaneVonBergen

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