Convention Center expansion delay now costly

An open letter to St. Louis County Council Chair Rita Heard Days; St. Louis Comptroller Darlene Green; St. Louis Mayor Tishaura O. Jones; St. Louis County Executive Sam Page; and St. Louis Board of Aldermen President Lewis Reed.

I write to you today as the elected leaders of the City of St Louis and the County of St. Louis. The City and County entered into an Intergovernmental Cooperation and Financing Agreement for the expansion of the convention center, and provided funding for the selection of architects, engineers, and program managers whose work began in November 2020, one year ago today. This group of highly skilled professionals has worked for the past year to design exact specifications for the improvements to the convention center with a schedule to release the expansion specifications to area general contractors for bidding in early October 2021, more than one month ago. The construction schedule has been designed to be completed in September 2023, working to accommodate existing contracted business and finish as early as possible to be able to secure several additional pieces of convention and tournament business for the months immediately following.

The delay that has occurred for several months in the issuance of the County bonds has had an impact on the convention center expansion project, as the City’s Board of Public Service (BPS) has not been able to meet the schedule for bidding the construction. The program manager at Kwame Building Group notified BPS, CVC, and the Coordination Team, that this now delays the project schedule by 12 weeks. As a result, we have lost the contingency window that we needed to have. The first group on the calendar that will be affected by this is the National Baptist Convention (NBC), contracted for September 2023. They selected St Louis many years ago through a competitive bid process and need all space in the convention center. They have contracts with more than a dozen hotels. We have reached out to the local contact to let him know and are contacting the national office to tell them that the program manager does not believe that the construction can be finished in their space by the time of their convention dates. The decision about how they proceed will, of course, be theirs. We will then notify the hotels that have contracts with the NBC that it is possible that the NBC could relocate the convention to another city.

This is the first group to have a potential cancellation, and I’m hoping the only one. But we have a very full calendar in the fall of 2023, and as this delay progresses there will be other groups that need all space and will be similarly affected. Plus, we have several options for new business that we are about to lose due to this delay and the consequential uncertainty on the construction completion date. Obviously, this loss of business affects the entire region. The NBC economic impact on our region, including new revenue from out-of-town guests, is roughly $15.4 million, which is a tremendous loss for our hospitality industry and the region as a whole.