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Cuomo's Queens Convention Center Plan: Big Business Or Boondoggle?
By
John Del Signore
Published Jan 5, 2012
Modified Jan 5, 2012
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By
John Del Signore
Published Jan 5, 2012
Modified Jan 5, 2012
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The biggest news to come out of Governor Cuomo's State of the State address yesterday was his big idea to raze the Javits Center and partner with a Malaysian company to build a $4 billion convention center, with a hotel and expanded gambling space, out in Jamaica, Queens. It would be bigger than America's current-largest convention center in Chicago, and Cuomo promises it would "bring to New York the largest events, driving demand for hotel rooms and restaurant meals and creating tax revenues and jobs, jobs, jobs. In addition to the new convention space, up to 3,000 hotel rooms will be developed. We will make New York the No. 1 convention site in the nation." Your move, Shelbyville!
Of course, some small-minded naysayers are worried the Malaysians will build this giant monstrosity and then it will sit empty, because of the moribund convention industry. So many municipalities have sunk money into the convention center game that there's incredible competition, as well as a shrinking market. In fact, most of these convention centers across America are run on a deficit, the Times reports, and according to the Manhattan Institute there was already a nationwide glut of convention-center capacity even before the recession.
"The convention business is a disaster everywhere," convention center expert Professor Heywood Sanders tells the Times. "Simply building more space gets you nothing more than a big empty building. And to put it in a place where there aren’t any hotels, restaurants or amenities next door is to doom it to serving only a local or metropolitan market." On the other hand, the thing would be right by the city's two main airports, so maybe it's crazy enough to work? And besides, Sanders, it'd be the Malaysians losing their shirts on this boondoggle! And we'd finally get some payback for what they did to Zoolander.
Tagged
boondoggle
convention center
Cuomo
queens
state of the state
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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