Denver city officials and business leaders converged atop the Colorado Convention Center Thursday to celebrate the completion of an 80,000-square-foot rooftop ballroom — part of a project that’s a decade and $233 million in the making.
The project hit several hurdles, including a bid-rigging scandal, but the focus at the ribbon-cutting ceremony was on the boost in downtown spending and tax revenue the expansion is expected to deliver.
The new flexible space, dubbed the Bluebird Ballroom, comes with an outdoor terrace. It’s part of an estimated 250,000-square-foot expansion at the convention center that is all but completed, according to an online dashboard tracking its progress.
The ballroom’s coming availability already has allowed Visit Denver and its partners to book an additional $200 million worth of events at the convention center in the coming years, Richard Scharf, the organization’s president and CEO, told attendees.
Normally, they would have been in the perfect spot to take in a panoramic Front Range view. But dense cloud cover on a gloomy winter day blotted out the mountains.
“You know, you can plan for almost everything,” Scharf cracked about the weather.
Visit Denver is the city’s convention and visitors bureau and is tasked with attracting business groups and events to the 33-year-old city-owned convention center. Scharf and company are doing plenty of planning, working to secure bookings upwards of 10 years out.
Mayor Mike Johnston was already sold.
“This is how we elevate, quite literally, what this space can do,” Johnston said during some brief remarks before taking up the ceremonial scissors. “Who would ever want to book your convention any place else once you’ve seen this space?”
Activity in and around the convention center is likely to play a critical role in efforts to revitalize the city’s downtown core, a key plank of Johnston’s successful run for mayor this spring. His 2024 budget dedicates $58 million to that goal.
City officials estimate that the expansion, the second major addition to the convention center since it first opened in 1990, will increase its economic impact on the city by $85 million per year. That will take the form of more nights booked at nearby hotels, more meals ordered at local restaurants and other consumer spending.
It was Johnston who cut the ribbon, but his predecessor, Mayor Michael Hancock, is the one who championed the convention center project. After discussions about updating the building began in 2013, Hancock backed a successful 2015 ballot measure that extended city taxes on rental cars and hotel room stays to raise $104 million for the project, along with millions more for the overhaul of the National Western Center campus on the north end of town.
The rest of the convention center budget was raised through the issuance of $129 million worth of certificates of participation in 2018, according to city officials, along with some help from hotels. The COP borrowing tool does not require voter approval and puts city assets up as collateral for the debt.
The project experienced setbacks, including the bid-rigging scandal that saw Hancock fire the original project manager, Trammell Crow, in 2018. Then, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the convention center was outfitted as a field hospital in case medical facilities were overwhelmed.
Construction finally got underway in September 2021. Now all that is left to be done is largely punch-list items, Scharf said.
Visit Denver will be the first group to hold an event in the Bluebird Ballroom. The organization’s Tourism Hall of Fame awards and scholarship event is planned for early March, Scharf said. It’s a soft launch to make sure there are no kinks in how the space will operate.
By summer, he expects the ballroom to be used frequently by convention organizers.
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