Expansion design costs $38M Commissioners set to approve contract for convention center
Designing the latest expansion of the Orange County Convention Center will cost $38.3 million, county records show.
Orange County commissioners are expected to approve the contract Tuesday with Populous+ C.T. Hsu, a Joint Venture.
The choice of Populous + C.T. Hsu was unsuccessfully appealed in August by lawyers for Orlandobased design firm Helman Hurley Charvat Peacock, or HHCP, who insisted the selection process was flawed.
HHCP designed the original convention center and numerous previous expansions.
Orange County’s 7 millionsquare-foot convention center, the second-largest in the nation, is considered vital to Central Florida’s tourism industry, which draws over 200 events and 1.5 million conventioneers a year.
Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said those visitors contribute an estimated $3 billion annually to the region’s economy and help rank Orlando as the top meeting spot in the U.S., ahead of Las Vegas and Chicago.
Funded with revenue from the hotel tax, the new expansion will add an 80,000-square-foot ballroom, 60,000 more square feet of meeting space and an enclosed connection between the North and South concourses.
The project is expected to cost about $605 million.
In October, commissioners hired Kenneth Champion to watch over the $605 million expansion.
Champion, who will be paid $220,000 a year to monitor the project’s progress, is best known for his work at iconic national ven