by Fred Seely
Editorial Director
The push for a new convention center is on.
Architect Jack Diamond, who chairs the local convention bureau, started the new year by debuting a presentation on the center to the Rotary Club of Jacksonville. It’s the first of many over the next 3-4 months, and Diamond hopes to have a plan in place at that time.
“The Super Bowl will be here in 13 months and we need to have everything in order,” he said. “The nation’s decision makers will be here, and we’ll be able to make a pitch for future business. We don’t need a new center then because big conventions are booked 2-3 years in advance, but we need a plan.
“We need a commitment from the community, a model of what our center will be, and how we’ll fund it. Anything else will be smoke and mirrors, and it will be recognized as such.”
The downtown Rotarians are often a prime stop for any massive proposal and over 200 listened quietly as Diamond spent 20 minutes — accompanied by a slide show from the Dalton Agency — on the benefits of either an expanded Osborn Center or a new center altogether.
Then they peppered him with questions: Where would it be? Who would pay for it? Who decides if we’ll do it?
“Those all have to be answered in the next 3-4 months,” said Diamond, with Jacksonville & The Beaches Convention and Visitors Bureau President Kitty Ratcliffe sitting a few feet down the head table. “We know it’s needed if we’re to be competitive for the convention business, and that’s a business we need. It’s clean, it’s efficient, it brings job, and it brings money that was made elsewhere.”
What we have now isn’t enough, said Diamond.
“We rank 205th among cities in the convention business even though we’re the 15th largest city in the nation,” he said. “We have a 78,000 square-foot facility with no adjacent hotel. It is a model for failure.”
The model for success, he said, would be a center of at least 250,000 square feet with a 500-room hotel next door. That would take us from a city with a facility smaller than Savannah to a city comparable with Birmingham and Charlotte.
The CVB’s presentation works off two studies which were commissioned in the last year. Both addressed two scenarios: enlarge the Osborn or build a new one.
Diamond, Ratcliffe and other CVB board members have been meeting with City Council members and the mayor’s staff to discuss the plan, and now are going public. At Monday’s Omni luncheon, the message was simple: if you want the plan, tell your friends and, especially, any politician you know.
“It won’t go anywhere without government support,” he said.
Diamond used San Diego as a comparison.
“When they first had the Super Bowl in 1988, they looked like Jacksonville does today,” he said. “They saw the need for a new convention center and moved on it, and they’re one of the best in the country today.
“The cities are so similar — waterfront, military, natural resources, an NFL team, a comfortable climate. They can be our model.”
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