Les Jones: Knoxville Convention Center

June 11, 2004

East Tennessee > Knoxville Convention Center

Bubba has the goods on State Street re-development plans in downtown Knoxville.

Here's the most amazing thing - the downtown convention center cost millions. Guess how many events are scheduled for June, 2000? Answer: one event. And notice that easy-to-remember domain, kccsmg.com. Those government types are real marketing whizes. It looks like the domain for a new kind of fertilizer.

Compare that to the schedule for the Knoxville Expo Center on Merchant's Drive, which was made from an old Kroger's building. Not only do they have more events, they got a better domain - knoxvilleexpocenter.com.

For those who don't know, the city wanted to condemn the downtown Holiday Inn to make way for a newer, larger hotel to accommodate all of the people coming downtown for conventions. The same people who now, mysteriously, aren't showing up because there aren't any events in the new convention center that was built with taxpayer money.

Skip through the upcoming months to see what's scheduled this summer. Notice that most of the events are things like the Austin High School Alumni Banquet and the Greater Knoxville Sports Hall of Fame Dinner &Introduction Ceremony. Jay was over for dinner and he noted that these are local events that bring zero dollars into the community. If the city hadn't built the convention center those events would have gone to local, privately-owned restaurants that weren't built with taxpayer money.

In other news, Knox County is implementing a wheel tax, and the city of Knoxville is raising property taxes. I'm sure it's all for a good cause.

Posted by lesjones

Comments

And that one event isn't even at the new convention center. It's at the old one next door in the basement of the Holiday Inn. The one they wanted to tear down. Sheesh!

Posted by: SK Bubba at June 11, 2004

Nice fact checking...the actual website for the center (which is printed on all their marketing materials) is www.knoxvilleconventioncenter.com. Yeah, I guess it would take a genius to think about typing that in. And I've recently seen the articles discussing the 28% increase in bookings from the Center. My organization recently held a week long convention at the center and it was fabulous. Acutally, we had to "fight" another group in order to get our space because the center was completley booked with Conventions, not those other types of events you discuss. In addition, I spoke with a rep from the city and the center and both confirmed that the center is not allowed to "sell" the center for long term events (such as conventions, etc.). That responsibility lies within the Knoxville Tourism and Sports Corporation, they receive the larger marketing dollars. The Center sales staff is actually only responsible for short term business, meaning banquets, etc. So next time you ramble on and on about something, you should probably check your facts first. We will continue to have our events at the Center and are very pleased with the support we received there. Oh, and by the way, our company is located in Illinois and we have no problem traveling to your lovely city and staying in your less than perfect hotels. For the life of me I can't understand why you would write these things without checking facts first. I'm not even sure why I bothered replying to this!

Posted by: Cathryn at January 29, 2005

Cathryn: those two sites have exactly the same content. I have no idea why the convention center maintains two sites, but they do.

I'll let people visit the convention center's site, view the calendar, and draw their own conclusions about how many events are scheduled there.

Posted by: Les Jones at January 29, 2005