Opponents Organize Against State’s Plan to Scrap Javits Center Expansion

The Spitzer administration’s decision to scrap a long-promised expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and sell some of its property to plug gaps in the state budget has prompted opposition from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and other city officials, state legislators, trade show producers and tourism executives.

It has also revealed deep fault lines within the coalition that in 2006 hailed a since-defunct .8 billion proposed expansion as critical to the city’s tourism industry and the creation of 20,000 jobs and tens of millions of dollars a year in economic benefits for New York.

In January, the Spitzer administration announced that it would renovate the convention center on 11th Avenue between 34th and 38th Streets and add only a sliver of new exhibit and meeting space. State officials also said they would sell the block between 39th and 40th Streets, eliminating any possibility of future expansion.

Trade show producers, who argue that the state’s .6 billion proposal would cripple the industry, have been lobbying for an alternative that would create additional space for the Auto Show and other public exhibitions. Some city officials also suggest that more meeting space and a conference center would be appropriate.

United States Senator Charles E. Schumer and the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, favor a much bigger and better Javits, but state officials contend that it would cost too much. The Hotel Association of New York, once an ardent advocate of expansion, is officially neutral.

Nearly all of those views will be contending at the March 5 board meeting of the Javits Development Corporation. The board, whose members are appointed by the state and the city, has not met for more than four months and has never discussed the latest plan.

A debate over the wisdom of making heavy public investments in convention centers also weaves through the dispute. Although convention centers often lose money, proponents argue that the spending of tens of thousands of visitors on hotels, restaurants, bars, museums and Broadway shows more than makes up the difference.

Some economists contend that cities across the country that have built new centers or expanded existing ones during a decade-long boom have created a national glut of exhibit and meeting space.

“The reality is that the convention and trade show market is a buyer’s market,” said Heywood Sanders, a professor of public administration at the University of Texas at San Antonio and the author of a 2005 Brookings Institution report on the convention industry. “Cities that have expanded like Atlanta and Orlando quite often find that they’ve gotten no new business in the wake of those expansions.”

New York may be a more attractive destination than Orlando, Cleveland or Sacramento, but, critics say, it will never compete with convention cities where hotel rooms are cheaper and more plentiful. Land is too expensive in New York to justify the costs of a big horizontal conventional hall.

The Spitzer administration, which had said that it wanted to build a “thoroughbred” of a convention center, did not dismiss the economic benefits of the Javits Center, but said that a cost-benefit analysis does not justify a large investment. The state rejected the 2006 expansion plan, which they said would have cost billion, not the .8 billion originally estimated, as well as a larger billion proposal.

“Javits is an important economic engine for the city and the state,” said Patrick J. Foye, co-chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation and the state’s top official overseeing the Javits Center. “But frankly, it’s less important here than in other cities.”

Even without the expansion, hotels in Manhattan have enjoyed record occupancy rates in each of the past three years. Manhattan hotels were effectively sold out on 250 nights in 2007, said John Fox, a principal at PKF Consulting, a hotel advisory group. And the average room rate hit 3.99, compared with 3.07 in Chicago and 6.72 in Orlando.

“We’re never going to be a true convention city like Las Vegas and Chicago,” said Michael J. Stengel, the general manager for New York City’s Marriott hotels.

The hotel industry has also resisted an increase in the hotel tax to finance the expansion beyond the current .50 a night per room.

But Jonathan M. Tisch, chief executive of Loews Hotels and, until last week, chairman of the city’s convention and visitors bureau, disagreed with those who play down the role of trade shows in the city’s economy.