Convention Center facing $809,987 projected opening-year deficit

Interstate Hotels & Resorts, the operations manager for the Hotel & Convention Center, is forecasting an operational loss of $809,987 for the convention center & shared space for Fiscal Year 2010, it was revealed at Thursday night's Convention Center Authority board meeting.

Projections regarding the Marriott Hotel were not reported to the authority, which oversees the publicly-owned convention center.

The authority was expecting operational losses for the first year, but the figure exceeds their previous projections, according to Laura Douglas, chair of the Finance Committee.

Douglas said that the expectation was that there would be an operational loss of around $607,000 for that first fiscal year.

It was also announced Thursday that three new bookings occurred since the October update. One is a trade show for 2009, one is trade show for 2010, and one is a consumer show for 2010. Board member Kevin Fry, who chairs the Public Relations, Marketing, & Hospitality Committee said that the booking pace for trade shows has fallen short of expectations.

Construction on the Convention Center & Hotel are expected to be "substantially complete" by late March 2009, with a projected opening on April 21.