Gone are the days when convention centers were little more than sprawling buildings with loading docks and parking lots.
Today they’re more an urban hub with services geared to visitors,and residents.
“Convention centers are no longer big boxes in cities. They have to be part of the community,” said Todd Voth, principal with Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, known as HOK, in Kansas City.
The Anaheim Convention Center was at the forefront of the trend when it debuted its last expansion in 2000. At the time, features like its graceful glass fa & #231;ade and interior colors, created by HOK, represented design innovations that turned once nondescript convention centers into local icons.
Anaheim’s curved glass wall represents the California coastline, while interior colors reflect the city’s agricultural history.
Similar designs relying on local culture now can be found across the U.S.
The Anaheim Convention Center’s design, created by HOK, can be found across the U.S.
HOK is working with Greg Smith, executive director of Anaheim’s Convention, Sports & Entertainment Division, on the next set of potential changes for the Anaheim Convention Center.
Trends that might come into play in Anaheim and at other Southland convention centers include building up instead of out, creating more flexible space and adding environmentally friendly features that make the building less costly to operate.
Movin’ On Up
As cities run out of available land, convention centers find themselves faced with tight urban sites and a need to expand.
“Even if plans are there to do an expansion, you end up with complex multi-layered centers,” said Chris Eseman, partner at LMN Architects in Seattle, which counts convention center work in Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego, Las Vegas, Denver, Spokane, Wash., and Phoenix in its portfolio.
Eseman said today’s convention centers need to have a local flair.
“They need to be striking, functional and economical,” he said.
Eseman and others point to San Francisco’s 3-year-old Moscone West as an example of urban infill expansion. The building is a half block from other Moscone convention facilities and has three floors of 100,000 square feet of exhibit space each.
In Seattle, the convention center’s exhibit hall extends over a street. In Denver, a light rail system wraps around one side of the building.
Anaheim is facing similar challenges. While its last expansion was done to keep existing clients by offering more space, the center now could benefit from an additional 100,000 square feet of meeting rooms, officials said.
“We’d have to go up to do that,” Smith said.
Quality and Quantity
Groups increasingly have added educational breakout sessions to draw attendees. That’s created demand for more meeting rooms.
Moscone West carved out almost 400,000 square feet of new flexible space with no permanent interior walls.
The Salt Palace in Salt Lake City is taking a similar approach for its expansion, said Thom Connors, senior regional vice president for convention centers at Philadelphia-based Spectacor Management Group, which manages convention centers and other properties. The company, known as SMG, manages the Long Beach, Ontario and Palm Springs convention centers in Southern California.
Convention centers also are adding theaters or auditoriums that can be used for entertainment or general sessions and ballrooms are getting bigger and more sophisticated.
“They’re becoming iconographic spaces,” said LMN Architects’ Eseman.
New Orleans, Denver, Minneapolis and Orlando have added theaters or auditoriums, but that’s something Anaheim doesn’t need,yet.
The Anaheim Arena is often used for general sessions and product launches. Last week, it got an exterior face-lift when the 1960s-style canopy was removed to make way for new landscaping that will blend with the rest of the campus.
Flexibility isn’t restricted to just room configurations.
SMG has seen a trend toward the inclusion of more types of food outlets in building design.
“There’s a continuing emphasis on bringing more diversified food and beverage to attendees,” Connors said.
Sustainability
A move toward “green” buildings is again gaining ground. Designers said it’s driven by cost concerns, customer demand and a desire for environmentally friendly facilities.
“It wasn’t a priority for local government for a while, but it’s coming back again,” Connors said.
The use of more natural light and ventilation, as well as energy-efficient lighting, helps reduce operating costs,an increasingly important factor to cities amid rising energy costs.
“It’s a big issue,” SMG’s Connors said.
The David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh was the first to be certified as a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, convention center in the nation. Others are climbing aboard.
“Vancouver will be the greenest building in North America when it opens,” Eseman said.
Anaheim’s Smith presented a proposal to the city in June for a comprehensive sustainable program that aims for the LEED-certification.
The Anaheim Convention Center uses food containers and utensils made from recyclable materials. Menus include pesticide-free produce, free-range chicken and shade-grown coffee.
Recycling is a major part of green programs, including those in Anaheim. When the Natural Products Expo was in town last spring, the show used hemp draping and booth walls made of sugar cane byproducts, Smith said.
“Recycling is one of simplest things you can do to be conscious of ecology,” he said.
Consulting the User
Not visible to consumers but important to operators is the use of customer advisory groups. Tradeshow and meeting planners have been involved in several recent convention center design proposals.
When the Colorado Convention Center expansion in Denver opened in late 2004, it included several elements suggested by meeting planners. All meeting rooms are on the ground floor, the size and flexibility of the ballroom was changed and a grand entrance lobby was added.
“Organizers demand more breakout space and are affected by how that space is designed, configured and finished,” Connors said.
HOK runs an annual workshop in Kansas City that includes people from all aspects of the industry to talk about industry changes that might affect convention centers.
Looking Ahead
The convention centers of the future may include some surprising features.
“The next wave of expansion is likely to include variations on the traditional structure,” SMG’s Connors said.
Designers such as HOK are looking at parallels between convention centers and airports in design, with more retail, consumer services and lounges.
Rooftops may take on a decidedly different look.
The San Diego Convention Center uses a stretch fabric roof over its upper level that Connors thinks might catch on.
HOK’s Voth said there’s also discussion about environmentally-friendly roofs that are lightweight, thin, have good drainage,and can be topped off with vegetation.
Other concepts in the pipeline, he said, include moveable tradeshow floors to make exhibit setup and takedown easier, the use of technology to change the exterior look to brand buildings for each convention or even holographic exhibit booths.
A good idea for Southern California: stacked parking, which operates like boat storage facilities in which boats are raised to heavy-duty shelving of sorts.
Customers get their cars by punching the location into a vending machine type device and paying a fee. No word on whether they’d accommodate Hummers.
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Trade Booth Redesign
The line between designing a tradeshow booth and marketing its products is beginning to blur.
So is the line between show managers, service contractors and exhibit builders. They’re all part of the show,and the shows keep getting more elaborate in an effort to draw and bring back attendees.
The average tradeshow attendee spends only five to 15 minutes at any one exhibit booth, according to industry studies. That makes it critical to have an eye-catching display.
At the same time, design is focusing on carpet, booth wall materials and other routine,yet necessary,elements of booth design.
Where once exhibitors built elaborate hard-walled booths, today they are turning more to fabrics.
“It saves space and weight and reduces costs,” said Jeremy Erickson, creative director for Skyline Orange County in Lake Forest.
Erickson said fabrics also allow clients more options for theatrical lighting. And they provide a better background for videos or company logos.
Sometimes the fabrics are environmentally sensitive.
At last spring’s Natural Products Expo in Anaheim, hemp drapes were common.
Skyline also specializes in modular design that is easier and cheaper to ship,a major concern amid rising fuel costs. Carpeting isn’t a glamorous aspect of tradeshows, but its cost has increased along with other oil-based products in recent months.
Erickson said Skyline is looking at alternate flooring concepts, such as tile and stone look-alikes.
“It’s gaining traction with clients,” he said.
Skyline clients include the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau, Santa Ana-based Powerwave Technologies Inc. and Newport Beach-based Pacific Investment Management Co.
Trade booths increasingly are featuring digital technology and interactive elements.
Dallas-based convention service provider Freeman Cos. debuted a state-of-the-art booth at a Las Vegas show this year.
Freeman, which has an Anaheim office, designed the booth to show off interactive elements such as video players, plasma video screens and illuminated displays. They found the move kept people in the booth longer than normal.
Multimedia booths are nothing new for Foothill Ranch-based Exhibit Works. They’ve been designing them for automakers like Ford Motor Co.’s Premier Automotive Group in Irvine and Mitsubishi Motors North America Inc. in Cypress.
Exhibit Works told the Business Journal earlier this year that the multimedia approach is part of a push toward experiential marketing.
Skyline also is one of a growing number of show organizers and display booth builders who offer seminars in effective tradeshow marketing.
“It’s all about getting the attendee involved and creating a more experiential booth that they’ll remember,” Erickson said.
,Sandi Cain
