“It’s all the convention center now,” said Ron King, general manager of the Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland, which is in the final stages of absorbing the adjacent facility in an effort to attract more and larger groups.
The $49 million project includes an expanded ballroom, a second-floor terrace with views of downtown, plus new staircases, escalators and restrooms to accommodate a much larger crowd.Construction started in March 2023 and is set to finish by the end of June, with a grand opening scheduled for late July.
A recent report by the Center for Exhibition Industry Research found that attendance at exhibitions and events nationwide in the fourth quarter of 2023 was still down 10% from the fourth quarter of 2019.“Nothing is getting less expensive to build,” he said. The building also includes dozens of windows and lots of natural light – a novelty for most convention centers – plus terrific views of Lake Erie and downtown.
* A second kitchen to service the new space, so food doesn’t have to delivered from one end of the center to the other.The addition will increase the number of available meeting rooms to 50, nearly double the previous amount.