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Mixed reaction after City leaders move forward with plans to redevelop, expand Austin Convention Center

The City said the $1.6 billion project will start construction in 2025. Construction is expected to last for four years.

AUSTIN, Texas — The growth in Austin has zero plans of slowing down.

On Friday, City leaders announced that they were moving forward with plans to redevelop and expand the Austin Convention Center – a plan that has been in the works for several years. 

The $1.6 billion project will start construction in 2025, and construction is set to be completed by 2029.

The plan is to nearly double the size of rentable space within the convention center in an effort to attract more visitors and create more jobs in the Austin hospitality industry. 

Currently, the convention center has roughly 376,000 square feet of rentable space, according to a news release sent out by the City. 

“With an inadequate convention center, we lose out to competitors and, consequently, miss out on millions of dollars for our Austin community. With a bigger convention center, the economic impact to our city is estimated to jump to over $750 million annually, from the current $468 million," Mayor Kirk Watson said in the release.

With the expected four-year closure to the convention center, hotels and businesses in the area are expected to be significantly impacted. 

Fairmont Austin is within walking distance of the convention center. 

Nenad Praporski, the general manager of the Fairmont, welcomes the new center and said the closure is a "small price to pay."

"I would maybe call it growing pains for a couple of years until it reopens, and when it does, I think it will be so much better for the entire city of Austin," Praporski said. "We still have so many hotels with a lot of meeting space in each one of our buildings. Idea would be that that we were able to accommodate a lot of these programs within the Austin hotel community and housed them inside the buildings."

Not everyone is for expansion, however.

Laura Templeton, a former Austin Downtown Commissioner, said she strongly opposes the plan and has reached out to all city council members, the interim city manager and the mayor on multiple occasions to get more insight into the project. She said she has not received a response.  

"It's going to be a terrible inconvenience to the people that live downtown, and it's going to put a very high financial burden on the businesses located downtown," Templeton said. 

Another concern Templeton mentioned was the price tag.

According to the City's news release, the project would be fully funded from the Austin Convention Center’s allocation from the municipal Hotel Occupancy Tax (HOT) and Austin Convention Center revenues.

"I think that a lot of those HOT dollars should be going to the artists in Austin, musicians and and performers, because that's what brought tourism. That's what draws tourism here. Not conventions, not trade shows," Templeton said. "Saying that 80% of hotel occupancy tax is going to cover the cost is not an answer and it's not realistic. And their projections are wildly optimistic."

Austin is home to South By Southwest (SXSW), which attracts people from all over the world. The majority of the festival's panels and conferences take place at the convention center, and it's not clear where the events originally set inside center will take place following the start of construction.

However, Chief Logistics Officer Michele Flores said the organizers support the project and look forward to returning to the revamped center in 2029. 

The convention center currently has 301 full-time employees. During a council meeting with the Tourism Commission in February, officials addressed that employees will be kept on board during the four-year shutdown and will be placed in temporary positions throughout the city. 

KVUE reached out to City officials to see if that statement still rings true.

A spokesperson confirmed that the convention center doesn't intend to see any staffing reductions and will coordinate with other City departments to ensure employees can work.

The next step is for the City to meet on May 22 and search for design and engineering firms that can tackle the project. 

The City also added that the convention center will still operate during construction and will work with Visit Austin, hotels and other Austin venues to accommodate smaller events that are currently scheduled.

Boomtown is KVUE's series covering the explosive growth in Central Texas. For more Boomtown stories, head to KVUE.com/Boomtown.

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