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Cuomo Announces $1 Billion Expansion for Javits Center
Almost from the day that the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center opened in 1986, exhibitors and hotel operators complained that the black glass complex along 11th Avenue in Manhattan was too small, too hard to navigate and perpetually damp from a leaky roof.
Successive New York governors, in turn, have announced their plans for a lavish expansion only to see them founder.
On Thursday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo took another crack at it, unveiling a $1 billion expansion that would create more than one million square feet of event space and New York City’s largest ballroom at the six-block-long complex, which stretches from 34th to 40th Street. An airy glass addition at the northern end of the center would provide meeting rooms, new exhibition halls and outdoor space for conventioneers.
Under the plan, Javits North, a semipermanent structure currently anchoring the center’s 40th Street end, would eventually be demolished and replaced with a four-level garage for tractor-trailers bringing in displays and other equipment.
The Javits Center’s renovation was just the latest project announced by Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, in the lead-up to his State of the State speech next week. He has called for spending tens of billions on seven projects, including new airports, a Hudson River tunnel, upstate roads and bridges and a remake of Pennsylvania Station.
Some analysts contend that the convention business contributes little to the economy, as cities across the country discount fees to lure the same shows. But Mr. Cuomo promised that the Javits Center’s expansion to 3.3 million square feet — a more than 50 percent increase — would bring more trade shows, jobs and tax revenue to New York.
“The Javits Center has long been an economic generator for this state,” Mr. Cuomo said at a news conference at the center on Thursday. “But we want to build and expand it to ensure it remains a premier venue for the next generation.”
State officials said the center was exploring using “existing resources” and other public and private financing options to pay for the project. Real estate executives expect the center to sell two nearby parcels of land for about $1 billion, although state officials would not say whether that was part of the plan.
Some elected officials, the hotel workers’ union and the hotel association lauded the governor’s plan, which comes less than two years after the state completed a $463 million makeover of the convention center, which included the addition of Javits North.
Although Javits is not the nation’s largest convention center — that is McCormick Place, in Chicago — it is widely regarded as the busiest, with very little down time.
Most convention centers are publicly owned and do not make money. Instead, officials hope to attract out-of-town visitors who book hotel rooms, shop and eat in restaurants, generating jobs and tax revenue.
But Heywood T. Sanders, a professor of public administration at the University of Texas, San Antonio, says public investments in convention centers rarely live up to their promise.
“You’re competing in an incredibly overbuilt environment where cities are giving away their space for free,” said Professor Sanders, author of “Convention Center Follies: Politics, Power and Public Investment in American Cities.” “It’s almost impossible to get ahead.”
Mr. Sanders said convention and trade show attendance at the four major centers in the country — in Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas and Orlando — fell to 3.8 million in 2014, down by almost one million people since 2006.
The same thing is true, he said, at the Javits Center, where trade show and convention attendance in 2014 was 629,500, well below the 966,730 attendees in 2006.
In measuring performance, Professor Sanders does not count attendance at public shows, like the auto or boat shows, which generally attract attendees from the local area who do not book hotel rooms or go out to dinner at fancy restaurants.
State officials say the small amount of meeting-room space at the Javits Center has hampered its capability to attract larger, more profitable shows. The expansion, they say, will quintuple the amount of meeting-room and ballroom space. In addition, the center for the first time would have 500,000 square feet of contiguous exhibition space.
Events at the center in 2014 attracted more than two million visitors, counting both public shows and conventions and trade shows, state officials said.
The state canceled plans to nearly double the size of the Javits Center in 2008, after the projected cost swelled to $3 billion from $1.8 billion.
Mr. Cuomo’s proposal on Thursday was not his first stab at creating a larger convention center in the city. Four years ago almost to the day, Mr. Cuomo announced plans to build the nation’s largest convention center — 3.8 million square feet, or bigger than the Empire State Building — next to a casino in Queens. The proposal was greeted with groans from the city’s hotel and convention industry executives, who viewed the location as remote and unattractive to conventiongoers.
The proposal collapsed within six months.
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Politics in the New York Region
A Cannabis Mess: Gov. Kathy Hochul has ordered officials to come up with a fix for the way New York licenses cannabis businesses amid widespread frustration over the plodding pace of the state’s legal cannabis rollout.
N.Y. Budget: Both of New York’s legislative chambers have announced their budget proposals. They have until April 1 to hash out a spending plan with Gov. Kathy Hochul, who unveiled her proposal in January.
Covid Deaths: Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo was subpoenaed to appear before a House subcommittee to answer for his administration’s handling of nursing homes during the pandemic, a development that could further damage his chances at a political comeback.
Redistricting: After rejecting a congressional map proposed by the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission and seizing control of the drawing process, Democrats adopted new district lines that would improve their chances of winning the House majority in November, but not drastically.
Long Odds: Republicans selected Mike Sapraicone, a former police detective who runs a security firm and positions himself as a moderate, as their preferred nominee in a long-shot bid to unseat Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.
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