Dakota Beacon

http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/miarticle.htm?id=7759

For numerous examples of optimistic projections followed by struggles to hit projected attendance targets, please take the time to read the referenced article.

America’s convention center business has been declining for two decades. The 126 million attendees in year 2000 fell to 86 million attendees in 2010. Meanwhile, the amount of convention space has increased from 40 million square feet in 1990, to 53 million square feet in year 2000, and to 70 million square feet in 2010. A former member of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority lamented last year that “Logic rarely has a place in the convention business.”

Local officials have changed their sales pitch, saying that convention centers should no longer be judged by how many hotels rooms, restaurants, and local attractions they help fill. Now the expansion of convention center facilities can “demonstrate to the world that we have unlimited confidence in our city and what it can do, not only as a convention destination but as the center of the most important trends in hospitality, science, health and education.”

Selected city officials with “marketing” skills are recruited to tout a city’s “brand” value as exemplified by a “Taj Mahal” quality convention center while ignoring the failure of publicly funded facilities to meet exaggerated projections. These marketers, often with conflicts of interest, insist that a marginally profitable convention center can only become viable with millions more in taxpayer dollars.

Does the Bismarck Civic Center Require Expansion?

The 20^th annual Williston Basin Petroleum conference is expected to attract more than 3,500 people. A lack of adequate exhibit space will severely limit the number of vendors. City officials will soon be very publicly expressing a need for expansion of the Bismarck Civic Center as the only acceptable solution to the lack of space. Their arguments will suggest that the capital city, the center of government, is the only logical location for the conference. The Bismarck Civic Center enjoys 32,000 square feet of exhibit space and 1,185 parking spaces, plus overflow parking adequate for 10,100 concertgoers.

What about Williston?

Yet Williston represents the most convenient conference location for most attendees. A Williston venue would allow the highest number of people to attend with the least highway miles traveled and its airport is capable of handling the number of operations during such an event. The 30,000 square feet of exhibit space in Williston’s Raymond Family Community Center (RFCC) is comparable to the Bismarck Civic Center. But Williston is currently taking public input towards replacing the RFCC with a brand new facility on UND-Williston land. The most logical solution would be for the citizens of Williston to insure that the new facility can accommodate the oil and gas conference well into the future.

What about the Fargodome?

The Fargodome is the single existing venue that would be capable of serving the number of vendors and attendees expected as the event gets bigger and bigger each year. So what then makes the most sense?

Solution Options:

• If oil and gas interests wish to hold the event in Williston, they should consider privately funding part or all of that new facility.
• If oil and gas interests wish to hold the event at the most plush facility in the state, they should hold it at the Fargodome.
• If oil and gas interests wish to hold the event in Bismarck but increase the size of exhibit space, they should consider privately funding the needed capital improvements to the Bismarck Civic Center.

Higher local option sales tax rates for Bismarck or Williston should be off the table. This conference is desired by oil and gas interests; they should pay for it.

And the combined production & extraction tax rate should be reduced from 11 ½ % to 9 ½% in the next legislative session to be competitive.