A Yinzer forever: Past VisitPittsburgh CEO Craig Davis reflects on his time in the ‘Burgh
Craig Davis has a piece of parting advice for Pittsburgh — build a convention center hotel.
After 19 years with VisitPittsburgh, Mr. Davis left the Steel City in December for the big D — as in Dallas.
That hasn’t stopped him from continuing to champion his Don Quixote-like crusade for a 500- to 600-room hotel attached to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Downtown Pittsburgh.
“I think a convention center hotel for Pittsburgh is essential in the future,” he said. “Planners want as many rooms as they can get under one roof or in the most concentrated area they can.”
In recent years, his pitch has landed with all of the enthusiasm of a root canal. A hotel building boom has added nearly 1,500 rooms in or near Downtown over the past five years. And the kind of full-service hotel Mr. Davis envisions likely would require huge public subsidies.
Based on one estimate last year, a full-service convention center hotel costs about $350,000 to $400,000 a room to build. That means a 600-room hotel could cost upward of $240 million.
Nonetheless, Mr. Davis said, many of Pittsburgh’s main competitors for conventions, such as Louisville, Ky., and Columbus, Ohio, have or are building such venues. Convention planners, he added, don’t want to sign multiple contracts for smaller hotels when visiting a city.
A convention center, or headquarters, hotel, he stressed, “would be a game changer for Pittsburgh.” It would supplement the 616-room Westin Pittsburgh, which has a connection to the convention center.
Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald said he might be supportive of a headquarters hotel with two big “ifs”: it “doesn’t require a tremendous amount of public subsidy and it makes sense.”
“I’d have to see some real evidence that it would really help with economic growth,” including jobs and tourism, he said.
He also wants to know exactly how many big conventions Pittsburgh is losing because of the lack of such a hotel — is it one or five or some other number?
Among Mr. Fitzgerald’s other questions are what level of subsidy would be required, how many rooms are needed, and how much of a competitive edge, if any, would Pittsburgh get with such a hotel.
In 2015, the last time the Pittsburgh-Allegheny County Sports & Exhibition Authority sought proposals from developers interested in building a convention center hotel, it backed off the project because of the level of public subsidies involved.
Critics of public spending on headquarters hotels have said they rarely make a difference in
attracting conventions.
Mr. Davis became VisitPittsburgh’s CEO and president in 2012 and served in those roles until his departure at the end of last year. He is serving in the same capacity at VisitDallas, where he started Jan. 2.
He ranks among his highlights in Pittsburgh helping to open the new convention center in 2003 and “bringing it into prominence with the assistance of all of the hotels in the community and our public officials.”
While Pittsburgh may never rival San Diego as a convention destination, two events helped to boost its profile: the Bassmaster Classic fishing tournament in 2005 and the G-20 economic summit in 2009 that brought world leaders to the Steel City.
The Bassmaster Classic, Mr. Davis said, helped change perceptions of Pittsburgh from a dirty old mill town to a “clean water destination.” The G-20 summit showed that the city could handle events of such magnitude.
“Both were events that were on national stages. They gave other subsequent customers the assurance that Pittsburgh could handle that business or facilitate other successful events,” he said.
“The joke was that if we could host the top world leaders successfully, we could certainly handle your convention.”
The Bassmaster Classic paid dividends in another way: it gave VisitPittsburgh more of an appetite for sports-related conventions and events. That emphasis helped Pittsburgh to land 22 NCAA championships between 2018 and 2022 — a proud moment, Mr. Davis said.
While the NCAA Men’s Final Four basketball tournament might be too large for Pittsburgh, he believes the region does have the wherewithal to host the Super Bowl and the Democratic and Republican political conventions. He noted the Democratic convention this year is in Milwaukee.
“Pittsburgh is larger than Milwaukee room-wise and hotel-wise,” he said.
Perhaps the lowest point of Mr. Davis’ tenure in Pittsburgh was trying to fill the new convention center two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks during a period when travel had yet to recover from that horrific tragedy.
“There wasn’t a lot to drive business,” he said.
Mr. Davis is arriving in Dallas amid challenges. City Council will be deciding whether it wants to renew its contract with VisitDallas after the agency came under fire in an audit by the city auditor last year.
Dallas is a lot bigger than Pittsburgh and has a better climate. But that doesn’t mean it is any easier to sell, Mr. Davis said.
“You have to play to the strengths of any destination. The job is just different. It’s all a matter of scale. This is a much larger destination but a lot is expected of VisitDallas,” he said.
And while Mr. Davis has moved on, that does not mean he’ll forget his time in the ’Burgh.
“As I said to my staff as I was leaving, I’ll be a yinzer in my heart forever,” he said.