Visit Wichita study calls for new convention center to replace Century II

A consulting firm hired by Visit Wichita says it’s time for the city to replace the Century II Performing Arts & Convention Center with a new facility, even as the national convention industry remains mired in a COVID-19 funk.

Conventions, Sports & Leisure International, which also recommended replacing Century II in a 2013 study, has produced a second feasibility study saying that the historic facility has outlived its usefulness as a convention center and that the Wichita market could support a new facility.

The study makes no explicit recommendation on what should happen to Century II’s existing facilities, including its iconic blue dome. It mentions that a “new” convention center could mean either a brand new facility or the redevelopment and expansion of Bob Brown Expo Hall, which was added to Century II in 1986.

“Whether or not the blue dome is there is a separate, a completely separate discussion,” Visit Wichita President Susie Santo said Tuesday.

The study says Century II’s round building could potentially be preserved and converted for another use, but CSL’s assessment is that no amount of redevelopment would make the round building a viable long-term convention center space.

“Wichita continues to fall behind its competition in terms of convention product and convention destination attractiveness due to limited public sector investment in recent decades,” the study states.

Pandemic timing

The study also acknowledges that there may be a shift towards more virtual or hybrid events in a post-pandemic world. Less than half of the national event planners interviewed by CSL expressed confidence that the convention industry will bounce back fully by 2023, though 92% said they expect a full recovery in 2025 or beyond.

Heywood Sanders, a public administration professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, tracks the annual performance of convention centers around the country and has paid close attention to efforts to replace Century II in recent years.

Sanders told The Eagle in September that it’s too early to draw conclusions about how people will gather in a post-pandemic world.

“Things remain very uncertain in the world of travel and hospitality at this point,” said Sanders, whose 2014 book, “Convention Center Follies: Politics, Power, and Public Investment in American Cities,” offers a data-driven critique of the convention center industry.

“So, one might reasonably ask the question, ‘What’s the cost in waiting a bit?’ What’s the cost in waiting to see, putting it off for a year or two and seeing how things look at the new convention center and hotel in Oklahoma City, looking to see how the Overland Park convention center performs.”

CSL Principal Bill Krueger said Tuesday that he’s confident the national convention center industry will eventually bounce back to pre-pandemic levels, even if meetings never quite look the same again.

“There’s always going to be that need to meet face-to-face,” Krueger said. “For most of these national organizations that are built around a national convention, I don’t think that that need to meet face-to-face is ever going to go away.”

But hybrid meetings are here to stay. The top industry trend identified by CSL in the study is a desire for permanent turnkey production and broadcast facilities onsite for creating real-time virtual content.

“There’s been lots of talk over the years going back 30, 40 years about technology ultimately usurping the need for meeting face-to-face, but to the contrary, we’ve found that technology has really enhanced the value of meetings and the content,” Krueger said.

Key findings

One key finding from the CSL study is that 80% of cities identified as Wichita’s key national and regional convention industry competition have expanded or built new convention center facilities in the last 20 years.

“Nearly all of Wichita’s peer destinations have expanded or developed new convention centers within the past several decades,” it states. “Further, many of these communities have also invested substantial public sector dollars into enhancing the convention product’s supporting amenity infrastructure, including incentivizing appropriate headquarter hotel products and entertainment/mixed use districts and infrastructure nearby the convention center.”

“It really starts with having the state-of-the-industry-type space that that market really expects,” Krueger said.

“You’ve got plenty of options throughout the country to pick from, so to the extent that we’re coming to the market with a substandard product, it’s going to put us in a very disadvantaged competitive position to attract that business.”

The study projects that a new convention center would generate 351 events annually, employ 818 people and generate 88,700 annual overnight hotel stays.

CSL found that 10% of national convention planners interviewed would either “definitely” or “likely” use a new Wichita facility, compared to 8% who said the same in 2013.

Another 37% said they would possibly use the space, up from 30% in 2013.

Fifty-three percent said they would “not likely” or “definitely not” use a new Wichita convention center, compared to 62% in 2013.

Regionally, 54% of event planners expressed strong interest in a replacement for Century II, up from 50% in 2013.

Seventeen percent of regional planners said they would “possibly” use a Wichita facility, down from 30%, while 27% said they would “not likely” or “definitely not” use it, up from 20% in 2013.

Century II’s future

The new study comes two weeks after an updated Riverfront Legacy Master Plan market analysis that envisions a Wichita riverfront without Century II or the former central library by 2030.

“CII has served a very important role in the Wichita community . . . However, after many decades of service, a substantial level of evidence has mounted indicating that CII’s space being substandard in industry terms and is significantly challenged with its marketability and functionality for events and clients of all types,” CSL’s analysis states.

Community activists hoping to save the buildings started a petition drive in 2020 to trigger a city-wide vote on the future of Century II and the downtown library. Organizers collected more than 17,000 signatures, but the City Council ultimately took the Save Century II group to court.

Last August, a Sedgwick County judge threw out the citizen petition, preserving the city’s right to raze the buildings. Members of the City Council, which recently voted to outsource Century II’s management to ASM Global, have repeatedly said they won’t approve demolition of the historic facility without a public vote.

In a Tuesday interview, Mayor Brandon Whipple emphasized that no meaningful decisions will be made about the future of Century II without a public vote.

“Any changes to Century II at this point would not only need approval of the City Council because it is a public asset, but also would need, by City Council rules, to go to a public vote of the people,” Whipple said.

Sedgwick County and the city of Wichita each spent $100,000 on designs for the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan in 2019. A version of the plan was finalized to present to the City Council in early 2020, but COVID-19 derailed talks of riverfront development.

This story was originally published November 30, 2021 at 2:10 PM.