Was the Convention Center a good idea?

Submitted by Victorzaroni t3_11my9n7 in philadelphia

This question might seem ridiculous. Conceptually, a convention center brings big crowds into a city that otherwise wouldn't have come and gets them into the surrounding area too spend their money. Win for the neighborhood. I totally get that point of view.

Except... The Philly Convention Center is so f'ing massive and looks empty 90% of the time. I usually walk down 13th under the convention center to get to Arch. I almost never see anyone inside that section, hell I almost never see something going on in the center in general. Last 2 things I remember are the car show and that PAX board game thing. They clearly have stuff going on if you look at their events page, but it definitely doesn't feel that way.

And honestly it doesn't seem to me that even when these big crowds come in that they're willing to explore the city. Instead, they opt to stick to the immediate surrounding area which is made up of big corporate establishments like Panera or Dunkin, because those corporations are the only ones that can afford that prime real estate. I acknowledge that Reading Terminal is a thing and that definitely gets convention center business, but that place is swamped 24/7 anyway.

My personal experience then (as one guy, I know) really makes me question what could have been if the convention center never existed. Would there be more local businesses, restaurants, housing, etc? The center has 1 million square feet of space. I just can't imagine a convention center was the best use of that space.

I am a newish resident, so I have no clue what it was like pre-convention center. Maybe at the time the center made perfect sense. But without historical knowledge, outside looking in type perspective, it doesn't make sense to me now. This subreddit seems to be pro-convention center. So... why? Is there factual data that describes the economy of Center City before and after the center? Is there evidence to show that it was a good idea?

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oliver_babish t1_jbkyr8o wrote

Our prior Convention Center, the Civic Center, occupied land that's now all CHOP/HUP property.

We need a large convention center because that's what fills our hotels and restaurants. And unlike other amenities (perhaps), it's one which really does need to be in Center City because that's where all the hotels and restaurants are.

Also, many of its events are not public-facing; it's trade groups and business associations. So, like, thousands of nurses or trial lawyers coming to town. It's a big deal.

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mountjo t1_jbl1hf0 wrote

yeah, everyone in here saying it's not needed has no idea how many visitors that thing brings in

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PirelliSuperHard t1_jc7ub25 wrote

Take a walk around there any day after 4pm and you will see dozens of lost-looking people with lanyards.

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BlackWidowLooks t1_jbl9ziw wrote

Anyone who's been to RTM regularly in the middle of the day knows that place stays packed with trade shows. Honestly, if the only things it's doing is keeping those food stalls profitable, I have no qualms with it.

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[deleted] t1_jblddvp wrote

Came here to say this. It’s so clear when they let out for lunch break and hundreds of conference attendees walk over with their name badges.

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RexxAppeal t1_jblfafc wrote

It's a shame Penn was allowed to knock down the Civic center. It was a gorgeous building with a ton of history, and could have been modernized for restored hockey programs and an excellent concert venue.

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oliver_babish t1_jblgcw3 wrote

On that, I have to disagree. Gorgeous building, hell yes, but the City needed a larger, modern Convention Center and CHOP/HUP needed the land to expand. Lord knows their success has been a boon to the region.

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k2j2 t1_jblwhnf wrote

I took my nursing boards there and used to park for work there. Incredible how it’s all grown and changed in 3 decades!

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HistoricalSubject t1_jbkyhc0 wrote

me and u/scumandvillany are trying to reserve it for a Marianne Williamson 2024 rally in the coming months. if elected, im sure she'll want to turn it into a MANDATORY yoga retreat and meditation center to help build back our spiritual and emotional health. with 1 million square feet of yoga, we will change the world.

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nnp1989 t1_jbl4kvr wrote

Really not sure where you're getting the "looks empty 90% of the time" feeling from. As someone who walks down Arch to work and back every day, there's nearly always an event going on, whether you realize it or not. Lots of industry-specific conventions that you may not hear about if you're not in that particular line of work, but it's definitely regularly used.

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Extra_Lengthiness_53 t1_jbl0l7q wrote

Did it need to be this big, probably not. But as someone that lives near the convention center I can assure you there are events there almost every week. A lot of events aren’t publicized because they’re industry specific. The convention center even hosts raves. I’ve even witness multiple events going on at the same time which would explain why it’s so big and divided into different halls.

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urbantravelsPHL t1_jblk5zi wrote

If you are a newish resident most of your Convention Center knowledge is apparently from the pandemic era. So yeah, it was 100% empty during the pandemic, and it's taken a while to ramp back up to normal business.

I think rather than going by how it "feels" to you at street level, you might want to look at some actual figures about number and size of events that are held there. The flower show, the car show, these are things that locals attend and are not representative; they don't bring in the hotel business.

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mountjo t1_jbl1dq4 wrote

It brings in a ton of visitors/economic activity...meaning a lot of tax dollars.

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[deleted] t1_jbl3qmz wrote

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mountjo t1_jbl91c9 wrote

If you're not in favor of bringing in tax dollars from visitors...then I don't know where to start here really.

I absolutely have my qualms with where the money goes too, but I feel like brining in $$ from out of town is one of the simplest net positives out there.

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mistersausage t1_jbkwgt7 wrote

There should be tall apartment housing on top of it. Low rise sprawl in center city is a waste.

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urbantravelsPHL t1_jbljgld wrote

this is the same discussion we've had about the proposed arena and whether it should also have a high rise building stacked on top of it.

The answer is that, for structural engineering reasons, you cannot stack a high-rise on top of a huge clear span roof.* A huge clear span roof has enough to do holding itself up. This is why you don't have arenas and large convention centers on the ground floor of high rise buildings.

*edit for clarity - I shouldn't speak of the convention center as having a "large clear span roof" as it certainly doesn't, in the manner that a large sports arena does. There are columns in the space. But it is still not the type of space you can easily place on the ground floors of a tall high-rise.

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I can think of a few big city hotels with quite large ballrooms as part of their meeting space, but even those are generally not right under the tall towers. (I'm thinking of the Marriott Marquis in San Francisco, where I saw Mikhail Gorbachev in 199? give a talk with alllll the ballrooms opened up and an audience of about 2000....that portion of the building is not underneath the hotel tower.)

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urbantravelsPHL t1_jblkn5g wrote

(it was may 1992 and Gorbachev was launching his foundation, which was later headquartered at the Presidio. Just had to look that up and remind myself that I'm old)

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mistersausage t1_jblqg23 wrote

That's fair, but if I recall correctly there are columns in the exhibition spaces; it's not spanned the entire width. (I haven't been in there since before the pandemic, so I could be misremembering)

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urbantravelsPHL t1_jblu1x0 wrote

Yes, there are columns in the main hall. But not of the number and type you would normally see in the skeleton of a skyscraper. Think more of the typical large parking garage underneath a tall building to picture how interrupted the space would be with columns.

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[deleted] t1_jbl4l7a wrote

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RexxAppeal t1_jblbik1 wrote

Comcast 2 is taller than any building in Tokyo (Tokyo skytree is much taller, but it's a TV broadcast "structure").

Comcast 1, Liberty 1 and 2 are all taller than Tokyo's 2nd tallest. Tokyo isn't actually a particularly tall city, it's more like London in that it covers a lot of land with midrise buildings, and has a few clusters of taller buildings near transit hubs.

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fuechschen12 t1_jbldk81 wrote

The previous site of the convention center in U City was no longer workable by the 1970s, and it made sense to bring it to center city as a revitalization tactic. Clearing out the porno theaters and strip clubs along Arch/Race wasn’t going to elicit much pushback. The landmarking of the Reading train shed also meant something had to be done with the hulking structure. Whether the final design has served its purpose is another question.

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ActionJawnson t1_jbmgakr wrote

Keeps me steadily employed, so I'm gonna say yes, good idea!

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daregulater t1_jbn7im3 wrote

You really don't have much of a clue what you're talking about

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TJCW t1_jblg6qo wrote

Apparently it does pretty well, but not as good as other cities due to union issues.

Ive always had a big concern is with the 13th street corridor and the homeless. It seems dangerous walking around there at certain times…

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Brief_Sentence7545 t1_jblr3ns wrote

I personally enjoy the Philly convention center. I can only compare to Dallas convention center which is in a weird part of town and has a much more ghostly feel to it.

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TooManyDraculas t1_jbodivb wrote

I would say it compares favorably to the Javit's center in Manhattan.

The Javit's is a few blocks North West of Penn Station/MSG. But it's kind of a pain to get to unless you're already nearby, and it's in a bit of a no-mans land in terms of anything else worth doing.

Javit's looks more impressive from the street. And it's been a bit since I've been in either. But recall Philly being laid out better, and it seemed more flexible.

I worked an event for a friend in Boston's convention center years ago. I remember that being impossible to navigate and not real accessible to anything we wanted to do on our off time. Lotta long cab rides.

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TooManyDraculas t1_jboc2ll wrote

There was already a convention hall in Philly starting in the 30s. It simply became too small and large scale events started moving to other parts of the city, like at sports stadiums.

This sort of things is de rigueur for cities of any size. Large, centralized, public venues for public events, businessy junk etc. Tends to feed hotel and restaurant business in surrounding areas, goes hand in hand with corporate offices and fostering industry. But also more public good stuff like entertainment events, political conventions etc.

Having this in a centralized location draws that action to a down town, rather than scattering it around the city. Where infrastructure might not be up to large scale events. Or events going even further afield. It's better for Philly to have a big comic convention, that car show that just went down or the like right in center city. Than to have that go down in some big corporate hotel off in King of Prussia. And it's more desirable for the groups doing these events to be in the middle of a city, with direct connections to airports, public transit, nearby hotels and amenities.

Prior to the current convention center the area was mostly a storage yard for Reading Terminal. Though the project famously, and controversially ate part of China Town and had some negative impacts on the community there. Part of why the idea of putting an arena in the Fashion District building is a heated topic.

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>looks empty 90% of the time.

You are forgetting the pandemic. That thing was pretty much closed for 2 years straight. And the sort of events it's meant for have not fully ramped up even now. A lot of things are tracked back, or operating virtually even now.

Prior to COVID there was almost always something going on there. Though with any convention center most of what's going on tends not to be huge events that fill up the whole thing. And many of the events that get hosted at these places are not public. The annual meeting of the state's CPA association isn't really going to garner much attention, even if there are thousands of people attending.

That said there's actually quite a lot going on there recently. I know there's been some food and beverage industry events going down this year, the car show. The flower show was back there this year.

And as goes pertinent anecdotes. I know a guy who works for a table top gaming company out of NYC. He's been to 3 industry events at the convention center in the last 6 months, non-public ones. Tradeshows effectively. Producers, distributors and retailers setting up and pitching/finding new product. Break out discussions about industry trends. Boring shit! But also an MTG fan event of some sort that went down.

His boss is pressuring him to return to Brooklyn, and start working from their office every day. Part of how he justifies not doing that, which he can't afford, is how easily he can get to what are considered pretty critical industry events that go down in Philly. As well as how much easier it is to travel to similar events in other cities.

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>And honestly it doesn't seem to me that even when these big crowds come in that they're willing to explore the city.

I will actually dispute that. I manage a bar here. Whenever an event goes down at the convention center we see a lot of people passing through who are exploring the city on their way to and from or on down time. And we're nowhere near Center City.

Had a really nice guy who ran a specialty plant store in Baltimore, in for the flower show, yesterday.

I know some of the staff at Milk Boy. This is part of why they open so early and do breakfast. Between offices and shit like the convention center they do reliable trade shockingly early for what is basically a craft beer bar.

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Firm_Airport2816 t1_jbntmqg wrote

It does not get used as much as it should and could. The massive amount of Labor unions and fees it costs to run a convention there has chased a lot of them to Oaks Pa and other outskirts of the city.

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Firm_Airport2816 t1_jbntviq wrote

Well I am incorrect and I am admitting it... they recently made a change where exhibitors can do a lot more of their own setting up and a lot less dealing directly with the unions, which in turn has increased the amount of conventions and exhibits over the past 2 years.

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hdhcnsnd t1_jbl15h2 wrote

You’re definitely right about convention center visitors not exploring much beyond it…

I stopped by the flower show this weekend and a large group of visitors were asking an attendant how to get to the Chilis on 13th. One of the best food cities in the country and… you’re going to Chilis…

I know it’s anecdotal, but yeah whenever the convention center is swamped it’s usually only like the 3-blocks around it that are getting an influx. It feels to me like a lot of the visitors the convention center attracts just drive in and create a ton of congestion and pollution and don’t really patronize any local businesses outside of RTM, so I’m not sure it’s great for the local economy when you consider the alternatives that could fill that space.

And yeah, it’s usually empty which is why the underpasses and surrounding blocks are a bit seedier.

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urbantravelsPHL t1_jbljoiz wrote

You're thinking of events which draw in primarily locals, which are not the norm at the Convention Center. The Flower Show does bring in some people from outside the area who stay at hotels, but not that many compared to the really massive medical and scientific conferences that draw from all over the US and worldwide.

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TooManyDraculas t1_jboekx2 wrote

I run a place in South Philly. We tend to get a ton of people off events at the convention center. They tend to bar hopping or passing through, explicitly exploring. Post up at the bar and have a few, ask for recommendations. Or they'll be on a run through all the breweries, or all the cheese steak places or whatever in a given section.

Explicitly exploring.

The bulk of Americans are going to stick to the familiar. The kinda people looking for the Chili's are probably eating at the Chili;s at home. We're a nation of people that will go to Italy just to eat at Olive Garden.

But Philly is pretty compact, and it's pretty easy to pick a direction and explore. The people who can make the time and don't subsist off McDonald's are spreading around.

We actually get a ton of people on layovers from the Airport as well.

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Lower_Alternative770 t1_jbl4g6v wrote

A bit off topic. But, I once knew someone who went to Olive Garden in NYC. 🙄

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TooManyDraculas t1_jboew9b wrote

That is a particularly bad Olive Garden too.

Been dragged there more than once unfortunately.

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Forkiks t1_jbl61kp wrote

Good argument also for the uselessness of a basketball arena in this section of town. It won’t be used for half the year, and almost everyone at a game will go to the chain stores (and such an arena will bring/open more chain restaurants)….maybe theyll go to the cheesesteak usual spots.

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RexxAppeal t1_jble373 wrote

Preserving the Reading Terminal was good. Unfortunately the rest of it seems like a mediocre convention center that doesn't make up for the dead zone it creates.

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shnoogle111 t1_jbkzcrs wrote

The convention center is a fork in a world of soup.

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Skootdaloot92 t1_jblk0pg wrote

Unfortunately, it’s usually empty because Philadelphia is a difficult city to hold an event. This is a Union strong city which means it’s unreasonably expensive to work in. I know the tradeshow industry I manage avoids Philadelphia and other Union strong cities for that reason. Not the only reason, but it’s a big factor.

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rossdowdell t1_jbkyv74 wrote

From the day the Convention Center opened it was obsolete. It was poorly designed, poorly built and did not pay heed to modern amenities that were already available in comparable venues in cities that compete with Philly for events.

Along with the Kimmel Center, the Convention Center was a mistake from Day One.

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