102 Business View Magazine - July 2016
come aboard, as well, where we will have multiple ho-
tel brands and price points adjacent to or in close prox-
imity to the facility. And when that occurs, we should
see tremendous growth in our convention business.”
Hotel rooms are important to the Center in two ways:
their occupancy taxes pay for its capital expenses, and
they are necessary amenities for organizations that
want to book exhibit halls and meeting rooms for their
activities over several days. “Our hotel numbers were
depleted drastically after Hurricane Katrina and they
have slowly started to build up to where now we’re
getting back towards the 11,000 number [of rooms]
within our county,” says McDonnell. “We anticipate
that that number will be back up to pre-Katrina levels
within another year. It was about a ten-year process to
fully recover from Katrina, and the area itself, while it
has rebounded very nicely, still has a lot of work to do
to fully recover from that natural disaster.”
Regardless of the past difficulties and ever optimistic,
McDonnell foresees yet another expansion of the Cen-
ter’s sphere of influence some five years up the road.
“I can see multiple hotel brands in or adjacent to our
facility,” he envisions. “I can see a large entertainment
district with retail and more restaurants located within
a stone’s throw of the building.” While McDonnell ad-
mits that there are already hotels, retail, and restau-
rants within several miles of the Center, he strongly
feels that “in order to fully achieve what we’re capable
of, those amenities need to be directly on our property
or next to it.”
Meanwhile, some updates recently have been made
to the Center in order to keep it attractive to potential
bookers, with more renovations on the drawing board.
“We’ve gone to fiber optics within the facility,” says Mc-
Donnell, “based on the demand for the amount of data
that’s being transmitted for various consumer shows
and conventions that are currently utilizing our facil-
ity. So, now the building is fully wired with fiber optics,
and we see other technological advances that we’re
going to have to make to stay competitive. From the
arena standpoint, our arena is an aging facility – it was
opened in ’77 – and while we’ve done some renova-
tions to the facility - seating, lighting, dressing rooms,
lobby, restrooms – the amount of technology that we
can bring to the arena is limited to a certain extent,”
he adds, ruefully.
Matt McDonnell’s original contact with the Coast Coli-
