Business View Magazine | September 2022

145 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 9 and leisure stay for its valued guests. “The first buildings went up in 2007 and 2008 but the planning for the development came much, much earlier,” Gus Pine, General Manager of Bayfront Convention Center says. “This was previously a gritty industrial area on the bay right on the water. There was a shingle manufacturer and a lot of other industrial sites down here that necessitated full remediation of the area.” A public decision to revitalize the area and create something that could be enjoyed by locals and attract visitors helped propel the initial development of Bayfront Landing. This general move toward providing a tourism and convention hub served as an economic incentive and led to plans to bring the meeting space to life. “We started building up the convention center and the 200-room Sheraton Hotel was finished just after that,” Pine states. “It was quickly realized that 200 rooms were not enough to support the demand that was coming in, so plans were started to create a second hotel that was finished in 2017.” Pine identifies that the decision to upgrade to a 400-room capacity for the development was a critical juncture from a selling standpoint. A project of this magnitude represented a great opportunity to go out and attract conventions to Bayfront Landing. “You need somewhere near 400 rooms to be able to attract the conventions that would fit in our convention center,” he explains. After the second hotel was completed the time was also ripe to develop a marketing strategy that would lead to a rebranding of the entire campus. A name that would easily be identifiable BAYFRONT LANDING