Sell the Hynes? Expand BCEC? Convention center authority needs a vision and a plan.

There is a price to be paid for indecision. And for more than two years, the two state-controlled convention centers in Boston have been paying the price for political dithering.

Should the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center expand? If so, by how much and how to finance that expansion?

Should the Hynes, its older, smaller Back Bay sibling, be closed and sold off ? If not, how will the state pay to upgrade it to contemporary standards?

And what about the valuable real estate in the Seaport District owned by the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority? It remains nothing more than vacant lots — it’s been put out to bid twice and twice the process has been halted.

If there’s one thing convention planners and the hospitality industry in general don’t like it’s uncertainty.

Now the MCCA — under a board newly under the control of Governor Maura Healey and her new chair, Emme Handy, interim chief financial officer at the Broad Institute — has decided to jettison longtime executive director David Gibbons. The immediate effect is that all of those critical decisions will once again be put on hold as the board searches for a permanent replacement for Gibbons and presumably searches just as thoroughly for a vision for the agency’s future.

For the sake of workers, neighbors, and businesses that rely on convention travelers, the authority needs to resolve those lingering questions.

This transition is taking place at a time when the market for convention business itself is still in a state of postCOVID-19 flux. Hybrid events are still a thing — a bridge to whatever comes next. And there is evidence that group and business travel generally remain down from pre-pandemic levels.

Nearly a year ago, Rachel J. Roginsky, head of the Pinnacle Advisory Group, delivered the news to a group of Boston-area hoteliers, invited to a presentation by the MCCA, that “group demand” for hotel rooms had been diminishing long before COVID hit the industry.

“The two convention centers are stabilized, accommodating a similar amount of events and associated room nights year-over-year,” a report prepared by Pinnacle found. But “without additional capacity, such as an expansion of the BCEC, or upgrades to existing facilities, they will continue to generate the same room night demand, if not less.”

Gibbons may be gone, but the numbers are still the numbers — and they aren’t pretty.

“The BCEC is operating close to its maximum utilization, allowing for very little further growth,” the consultants reported. That is, unless the capacity of the BCEC is expanded — not the $1 billion expansion shelved by Governor Charlie Baker when he took office but the more modest $400 million expansion proposed in 2019. But Baker coupled the BCEC expansion with the sale of the Hynes and the redevelopment of that prime piece of Back Bay real estate — a proposal that ran headlong into opposition from area lawmakers and the Back Bay Association.

However worthy a thought the proposed sale was, Healey’s appointment of the head of the Back Bay Association and the leader of a union representing hotel and hospitality workers to the convention board signaled for all practical purposes its end.

But if the state is going to keep the

If there’s one thing convention planners and the hospitality industry in general don’t like it’s uncertainty.

Hynes, that means the MCCA will have to come up with the more than $200 million needed to repair and renovate the building that was originally constructed in 1963 and underwent a major reconstruction in 1988. A commitment to keep the building open, including a major redo of its heating and electrical systems, will also mean doing that work while it remains open for business — adding to an already complicated and expensive project.

Meanwhile one source of income for funding a BCEC expansion and/or rehabbing the Hynes would be the proceeds of a 99-year ground lease on 6.2 acres of MCCA-owned land near the BCEC — two parcels on D Street and one on E Street — originally put out to bid a year ago. That bidding process attracted two proposals for a combination of office and lab space from Cronin Development and Boston Global Investors. But the process was halted after two local legislators and two city councilors protested the lack of a “meaningful community process.”

After Healey’s new board members arrived in June, the process was restarted; the same two bidders responded when bids were reopened in September. The Cronin group got the nod from Gibbons and the MCCA staff, and it was on the board’s November agenda when Handy took it off the agenda, saying in a statement, “This is an important decision with long-lasting implications for many stakeholders. We will take the time necessary to make sure that, as we move forward, we have confidence in both the process and the result.”

That was days before Gibbon’s ouster.

As long as the board is rethinking that now much-delayed process, surely it should consider the possibility of housing on those sites — something that remains in dreadfully short supply in the city.

There are those who fault Gibbons, a former hotelier, for keeping an eye on the MCCA’s bottom line. But this was, after all, the guy who when he came in took the money-losing Lawn on D and turned it into a $2 million a year profitmaker and a community asset. It’s what a good manager in the hospitality industry does and what Handy and the board should be searching for as they steer a quasi-public agency too long in political limbo into its next era.