ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
.
Читать онлайн.
Convention Center Follies
AMERICAN BUSINESS, POLITICS, AND SOCIETY
Series editors: Andrew Wender Cohen, Pamela Walker Laird, Mark H. Rose, and Elizabeth Tandy Shermer
Books in the series American Business, Politics, and Society explore the relationships over time between governmental institutions and the creation and performance of markets, firms, and industries large and small. The central theme of this series is that politics, law, and public policy—understood broadly to embrace not only lawmaking but also the structuring presence of governmental institutions—has been fundamental to the evolution of American business from the colonial era to the present. The series aims to explore, in particular, developments that have enduring consequences.
A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.
Convention Center Follies
Politics, Power, and Public Investment in American Cities
Heywood T. Sanders
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
Copyright © 2014 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sanders, Heywood T.
Convention center follies : politics, power, and public investment in American cities / Heywood T. Sanders — 1st ed.
p. cm. (American business, politics, and society)
Includes bibliographical references and index
ISBN 978-0-8122-4577-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. City promotion—Economic aspects—United States. 2. Convention facilities—Economic aspects—United States. 3. Convention facilities—Economic aspects—United States—Case studies. 4. Congresses and conventions—Economic aspects—United States. 5. Congresses and conventions—Economic aspects—United States—Case studies. I. Title. II. Series: American business, politics, and society
HT325 .S26 2014
| 659.2’930776 | 2013036503 |
For Hilary and David
and for George Wendel, a model teacher and scholar
Contents
Chapter 3. Promises and Realities
Chapter 4. They Will Come…and Spend
Part II: From Economics to Politics
Chapter 6. Chicago: Bolstering the Business District
Chapter 7. Atlanta: Enhancing Property Values
Chapter 8. St. Louis: Protection from Erosion
Conclusion: The Cities Business Builds
Preface
City governments are usually viewed as providers of basic services: police and fire protection, public works, parks and recreation, and libraries. Yet cities and a broad array of other local governments are also providers of public capital. They have long built major public buildings such as city halls, courthouses, and libraries, and in some places public auditoriums and theaters. In the 1950s and 1960s, a number of communities began the development of new convention halls—New York City’s Coliseum, Cleveland’s Convention Center, Atlanta’s Civic Center, Baltimore’s Civic Center—as part of schemes for urban renewal or downtown revitalization.
Those early convention venues were succeeded and replaced by newer, larger, and presumably more competitive centers within a decade or two. New York City’s Coliseum was replaced by the new Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in 1986; Atlanta’s Civic Center, opened in 1967, was superseded by the new Georgia World Congress Center in 1976. The new Baltimore Convention Center was opened in summer 1979.
During the 1980s and 1990s, the public investment in new and expanded convention centers boomed, as other cities sought to compete with New York, Chicago, and Atlanta. And that boom continues, with state and local governments spending over $13 billion on center building between 2002 and 2011. The building boom has been driven in large part by a revolution in center finance, and by a new kind of public role and promise. Expansive new convention centers increasingly became the product of state governments or special purpose public authorities, neatly avoiding the political and fiscal limits on city governments.
At the same time, a massive convention facility was no longer simply a means of accommodating an occasional national political gathering or a symbol of local pride. It was touted as a key element in local “economic development,” one premised on the assumption, regularly validated by “expert” consultants, that a new or larger convention center would yield a wave of new out-of-town visitors. Those visitors, bringing “new money” to the city, would in turn spur new private development, and ultimately thousands—often tens of thousands—of new jobs. With that money, development, and jobs would come a proportional wave of new public tax revenues, revenues sufficient to provide a substantial “return” on the public investment in convention center development.
In many ways, the contemporary convention center development story is one of the unbridled successes of local government: success in overcoming political obstacles and often public opposition, success in mobilizing public revenues and dollars, success in building expansive