LETTERS

Friday Lead Letter New convention center is a must for our city to thrive

Jon McGowan

I fully support the efforts of the Downtown Investment Authority to build a new convention center.

I firmly believe that the pathway to Downtown revitalization is in convention business — so much so that I personally invested tens of thousands of dollars and nearly went bankrupt trying to put on a national/regional convention here.

And I will try again. Because I still believe it is good for this city.

While I admire the efforts of the Jax Sports Council to continue to bring new and unique sporting events to our community, the reality is the economic impact of sporting events here has maxed out.

To go to the next level, we must also have an aggressive plan to become a convention destination.

And that plan must start with having a real convention center.

Jacksonville currently has 74,000 square feet of convention space at the Prime Osborn Convention Center.

To put that into perspective, Miami has 500,000 square feet of convention space.

Orlando has 2.1 million square feet of convention space.

And Tallahassee has a convention center of 54,000 square feet.

WE’RE MISSING OUT ON BIG EVENTS

In just a matter of days, Orlando’s convention center will host the PGA Merchandise Show; it brings in golfers from around the world.

Considering the fact that the PGA Tour is based in Ponte Vedra Beach, the PGA Merchandise Show should be in Jacksonville.

But it isn’t in Jacksonville because it is an event that needs 650,000 square feet of convention space.

We are behind the curve.

And drastically so.

The new proposal will increase the size of our convention center space to 240,000 square feet.

That is still well below what I think we need. But it would at least bring us up to the point where we no longer have a glorified community center — and we could then truly compete for mid-sized events.

In 2015, I met a hematologist from London; he was attending a conference in Orlando with some 30,000 others in his specialty. You can’t convince me that a doctor would rather hang around Disney World than sneak in a few rounds of golf at TPC Sawgrass.

But Jacksonville wasn’t an option.

The hematology conference was the equivalent of roughly 120,000 room nights, along with all of the money spent on food and transportation.

Those room nights — and all of that money — should have been spent in our city. But we just did not have the space to host that kind of event.

If we want Downtown development, we need events like that hematology conference to drive new restaurants, hotels and entertainment.

The future of Downtown starts with a larger convention center.

Jon McGowan, Jacksonville Beach