Over-budget and under-booked, the project could turn into the Liberals’ equivalent of the fast-ferry fiasco
Sun
Seen through the pilot house of the Zaandam cruise ship, the new Vancouver convention centre is taking shape on the waterfront. Photograph by : Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun
When the latest bad news about cost overruns on the Vancouver Convention Centre hit the streets in February, critics claimed it had become the Liberals’ fast-ferry project.
At the time, that claim was largely rhetorical excess, but disturbing news this week about lacklustre bookings for the convention centre after its scheduled completion may yet make it stick.
As we wrote in February when the latest estimate of more than $800 million was released, the $300-million increase over the original budget would likely be forgotten over the next two decades as long as the convention centre is a financial success once it opens its doors. Now that success appears to be in jeopardy.
Outgoing Tourism Vancouver chairman Jim Storie revealed this week that projected occupancy rates are currently just 38 per cent for 2011, 28 per cent in 2012 and an abysmal three per cent in 2013. Those numbers prompted one prominent hotelier to warn that unless more business can be found in a hurry, the new convention centre is going to be the “biggest empty ballroom in town.”
Those post-Olympic years seem a long way off, but major conventions of the type the new centre was built to attract are typically booked three to five years ahead.
Storie says another 80 to 90 conventions need to be booked over the next two years to ensure reasonable occupancy levels in the five years following the 2010 Olympics.
Tourism Vancouver president Rick Antonson said that won’t happen without putting more money into sales promotion. But Fairmont Hotels and Resorts regional vice-president Phil Barnes complains that the current division of responsibility between Tourism Vancouver and the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre for booking conventions needs to be resolved so that one group or the other can be held accountable for the success or failure of the new facility. Antonson says there are still hundreds of prospects that could be sold on Vancouver if Tourism Vancouver had the resources to seek them out with a larger sales staff.
What’s clear in all of this is that, if the convention centre is a success, we all benefit from the increased business it will bring to Vancouver.
If not, it will be a financial drain for taxpayers and an embarrassment to the city and the province.
Given the stakes, the provincial government as chief underwriter of the project needs to quickly convene all the players and figure out what is needed to head off this impending financial disaster. If more seed money is needed from the province to drum up conventions, it must be attached to a business plan that will be carried out by a lead agency which can be held accountable for carrying it out.
Right now, it appears the convention centre expansion project is drifting towards the same rocks on which the fast ferries foundered.
