Meet Virginia Beach
City’s New Convention Center has Planners Taking a Closer Look
by Rachel Globus | Published in January 2007 Focus on Event Sites
Convention planners are familiar with that slight sense of trepidation that taking a group to a new location inspires. Will they like it? Will they go home buzzing about their experience? Will the city help make this year’s convention the best one yet?
Celestine Peters, however, has an even trickier problem: After holding her convention in Virginia Beach, she’s worried how her attendees will react when she doesn’t take her group there.
“When we leave Virginia Beach our delegates are going to have a fit,” says the president of the International Women’s Council of the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who held her convention in the Virginia beach town in 2005 and will return in 2007. Her organization even has a policy that its conventions cannot be held in the same destination more than once in five years, but she was able to make a one-time exception for Virginia Beach.
“It’s one of our delegates’ favorite places,” she says.
With the completion of Virginia Beach’s striking new convention center and a host of other upgrades, the city is making sure Peters isn’t alone.
A City on the Move
Located just three hours from Washington, D.C., in the Hampton Roads region, Virginia Beach has long been popular in the leisure market. Now, the city is focusing on becoming a year-round destination, says Al Hutchinson, director of convention sales for the city.
The $202.5-million convention center, which will be completed this month, is part of a plan that also included building a sea wall, widening the beach and bringing a number of new hotels online. A newly developed downtown district will offer a new Westin this fall, a performing arts theater, and a number of retail and restaurant establishments.
The crown jewel of these efforts, the Virginia Beach Convention Center, doesn’t let visitors forget that the city is a beach destination — and a sophisticated one.
The Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP-designed building recalls the contours of a ship, featuring a prominent triangular-shaped tower that resembles a ship’s prow. Inside, silvers, blues and grays contrast with the dark wood of a boat hull-shaped structure that contains meeting room pods.
“It’s a gorgeous facility,” says Peters.
While the architecture is gaining plaudits from planners and recently won an award from the American Institute of Architects, a number of details remind you that it’s not all form and no function.
When the city created its 150,000 square feet of column-free exhibit space, it had your load-in crews in mind — 10-foot by 10-foot grids are permanently etched into the floor. The show management offices conveniently overlook exhibit hall.
The meeting rooms, part of the 300,000 square feet of meeting space, can be accessed via back-of-house corridors. The facility also includes a particularly chivalrous touch — just outside the ladies’ restroom in the pre-function area is a narrow, but wonderfully chic, modern-day powder room.
Inside the tower, attendees will find what must surely be one of the world’s few triangular board rooms. Another floor houses a VIP lounge with views to the coast.
The 31,000-square-foot ballroom, paneled in red oak, offers 128 rigging points. Large panels of LED lights that come in numerous hues shine down from the ceiling.
Other features include a 90-foot-wide video art wall that can show custom messaging, in addition to its regular programming — digital media works commissioned by the city. The facility is fully wired and wireless (Internet costs $7 per day). Add in 2,230 free parking spots and a caterer (Distinctive Gourmet) whose tomato soup shots and creamy risotto are not to be missed, and you see why total attendance more than doubled from fiscal year 04/05, according to the Virginia Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau, and facility revenues were $750,000 more than initially anticipated.
“We love it!” says Elizabeth O’Brien, general manager of the Rock ’n’ Roll Half Marathon for Elite Racing. In the city since 2001, her event attracts 22,000 visitors each year. The convention center, which houses a two-day health and fitness expo, “met and exceeded our needs,” she says.
Although the convention center is just out of walking distance of the oceanfront, Peters reports that this did not pose a problem for her group — a large portion of which are over 65 — as the city arranged buses to shuttle delegates from the hotels to the convention center.
Her attendees are thrilled at the prospect of returning, and she’s expecting a larger turnout than in 2005, she reports. Because of the city’s can-do attitude, she considers it on the same level as such top-tier cities as Chicago, Nashville and London.
“It was pleasure to work with them,” she says. “They did everything they said and more.”
About the author: Rachel Globus
Rachel Globus is the former editor and education director for Event Solutions.