$420 million convention center expansion to begin in a year
Construction work on downtown Milwaukee’s $420 million convention center expansion is expected to begin in about a year.
That’s according to a project update presented at a Friday board meeting of the Wisconsin Center District, the state-created public agency which operates the Wisconsin Center convention facility.
The expansion, budgeted at $419.9 million, will double the facility’s space — giving it the ability to host two major events at the same time.
It will add 112,000 square feet to the facility’s main exhibition hall for a total of 300,000 square feet.
The development also will create a second ballroom with an outdoor terrace and add meeting rooms, indoor parking spaces and loading docks.
The center district last fall sold bonds to borrow the money needed to finance the project.
The project’s bonds are to be paid off over 40 years by countywide hotel, restaurant and car rental taxes levied by the center district. The first debt payments aren’t due until 2027.
The project is in the schematic design stage, with more detailed design work to be completed by this fall, said Mike Abrams, senior director at CAA Icon, the Denver-based firm hired by the center district to oversee the project.
Abrams said the construction work is to begin during the first quarter of 2022.
“Hopefully in January,” he told board members.
The project will take two years to complete, with the expanded convention center to open in the first quarter of 2024.
Even though the pandemic has canceled conventions nationwide, with airlines, hotels and restaurants facing huge losses and layoffs, the timing is right for the expansion to proceed, convention center officials say.
The district, which also operates UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena and Miller High Life Theatre, had a 2020 loss of $5.5 million.
It had expected to post around $21 million in net income in 2020 before the pandemic canceled the Democratic National Convention and dozens of other Wisconsin Center events.
The convention business is projected to fully recover by 2023, according to
Marty Brooks, center president and chief executive officer.
Annual direct spending of visitors to the Wisconsin Center, estimated at $105 million in 2019, is expected to increase to $154 million during the expansion’s first year, according to a study by HVS Global Hospitality Services, a consulting firm based in Westbury, New York.
Full-time jobs at hotels, restaurants and other businesses tied to that spending, now estimated at 800, are expected to increase to 1,200 in 2024, according to the study.
The Wisconsin Center opened in two phases, in 1998 and 2000. The third phase will be on what are now convention center parking lots between West Wells Street and West Kilbourn Avenue.