Business View Magazine | June 2019

67 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JUNE 2019 service drops because of something outside the center’s control, there is still another path to get to another provider, so service to guests isn’t interrupted. Flexible space is a big deal for the Center, and one of the capital projects just finished is a curtaining system for the exhibit hall, so groups outgrowing the ballroom can use the exhibit hall with a ballroom-like environment, but can quickly switch back to an exhibit hall. “It’s that flexibility that our clients are looking for,” Mitchell says. There is a greater demand for sustainable and green practices, these days, not just to save money, but to meet the structures and specifications of clients who want to be in a venue that makes an effort to be sustainable. Mitchell, having experience in overseeing multiple convention centers during his time at Spectra corporate, suggests that this is something that varies region to region. “If you’re in Portland, Seattle, or similar locations, absolutely, you have to have a robust sustainability program, and you really have to market it,” he asserts. “A lot of these venues have sustainability team coordinators or managers. Other places, it’s more a ‘check that box’ mentality. The planners simply want to know if you have a sustainability program and sometimes it doesn’t go any deeper than, ‘yes, we do,’ and the planner will check that box as a venue they will consider. In this part of the country, we’re more the latter. We have a sustainability program and we have had one for a long time, but it’s not something that we have to market as aggressively, and therefore, we tend to stay more traditional, and focus on the bigger impact – LED lighting retrofits, HVAC improvements, recycling, etc.; things the clients don’t necessarily see as a new creative, but it has a real impact on the environment.” Mitchell recalls that the Center was built at a time when the reasonable thing to do was to pick a good location, often based on where a municipality had land, and then around it came the hotels; then you were in the convention business. That was the school of thought then. “Now, everybody wants a more immersive OVERLAND PARK CONVENT ION CENTER