90 Business View Magazine - September 2016
Palm Springs Convention Center
The meeting oasis
Palm Springs, a desert city in California’s Coachella
Valley, has been a fashionable resort destination for
over a hundred years. Known for its hot springs, stylish
hotels, golf courses, spas, boutiques, and hip restau-
rants, as well as for its natural beauty, the city plays
host to over 1.6 million visitors a year. In the center of
town, and only 1.5 miles from the Palm Springs Inter-
national Airport (PSP), sits the Palm Springs Conven-
tion Center, the area’s premier venue for conferences,
meetings, and events.
The Convention Center first opened in 1989, and ac-
cording to Rick Leson, its Director of Sales & Market-
ing, the facility was less than half the size than it is
now. “The exhibit hall was about 40,000 square feet,
which is pretty small, when you consider the size of
conventions centers, these days,” he says. “In addition
to the exhibit hall, there were eight small breakouts,
many of which had air walls which opened up onto
a hallway and then into the exhibit hall; so we could
actually grow the exhibit hall from 40,000 to 50,000
