The economy has hurt Gateway Center, but its 20 years have been a boon to Collinsville

Mar 1, 2010 — Belleville News-Democrat

Elizabeth Donald

Mar. 1, 2010 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- COLLINSVILLE -- Ginger Trucano remembers very well how hard it was to get the Gateway Center built.

Trucano was on the City Council in 1990, when the vote to create a taxpayer-funded convention center passed -- barely. Trucano was in the hospital for cancer surgery and signed herself out to get to the meeting for the vote, ignoring her doctor's protests.

"I told him I'd be back on Tuesday," she said. "That's how tight it was."

Earlier this month, the Gateway Center celebrated its 20th anniversary of bringing trade shows and visitors to Collinsville. Through boom years and in the current downturn, the center has continued to grow along with Collinsville.

The economy has hurt travel and convention industries. While the center is not in trouble, recent economic stresses have hit it hard.

The number of large conventions and trade shows hosted at the Gateway Center have remained relatively stable. Consumer shows have dropped from 28 in 2007 to 21 in 2009, meetings have dropped from 368 to 279 and the number of visitors has dropped from 205,039 to 149,997.

It's the economy, according to director Cindy Warke. Corporate spending on meetings is down across the country. Consumer and trade shows have fewer exhibitors and fewer patrons have money to spend at those shows.

That gibes with current research: The U.S. Travel Association estimates that 247,000 travel-industry jobs were lost in 2009 alone. Special Event Magazine's survey showed 71 percent of in-house organizers and 78 percent of independent planners expect reduced budgets in 2010 with "an uncertain economy."

For the center, it means that exhibitors request less equipment, meetings have fewer special services, people having wedding receptions choose to forgo the bar and a number of other small decisions that hurt the bottom line.

But Warke said the center is keeping up by cutting operating expenses whenever possible, keeping rental rates the same as last year, and is considering producing its own shows.

The center gets its money from a 5 percent hotel tax and 1 percent food and beverage tax levied only on the adjacent areas of Collinsville. Those tax revenues are expected to go up slightly, which Warke said will help counter the expected drop in building rent and catering income.

Tenants such as the St. Louis Woodworking Show, the Archon fiction convention and Pegasus Productions have returned to the center year after year. World Class Gymnasts has its regional competition there every year for 13 years, bringing 900 girls and their families to Collinsville from as far away as Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.

"We like the feeling here," said organizer Valerie Brown. "This is one of the few places that can run something this large."

Archon was an annual tenant for 15 years, taking over the entire center and the hotel next door. This year, Archon will be at Westport instead, but chairman Steve Norris said it had nothing to do with the Gateway Center, but with the hotel next door.

"The new owners who bought the Holiday Inn made it impossible," Norris said. "We have nothing but good things to say about the Gateway Center. They were terrific, they always worked with us."

That's another loss for the Gateway Center -- a major event with about 2,500 people a year.

Despite these hits, though, Warke said the center has been able to reimburse the city for about 50 percent of the tax increment financing money it pledged to assist with the expansion of the center in 2005.

"We're pleased, given the way things are, that we're not down that much," said board chairman John Bitzer. "We're happy that we're still keeping our heads above water and doing the shows we're doing now. ... Once the economy gets better, we think there will be more conventions."

Trucano calls it a catalyst for the growth Collinsville has seen in the past two decades.

"Until we got the Gateway Center, we didn't have too much in Collinsville," she said. "It's exciting what's happening down there now. ... (Without it) we wouldn't have the restaurants and hotels, I don't think any of it would have existed."

At the time, the proposal to build a convention center was strongly contested. Trucano said residents and some city leaders thought it would fail, that it would be "a white elephant."

But it has been expanded twice and continues to draw both major conventions and smaller meetings. It once sat alone in a cornfield; it is now surrounded by at least a dozen hotels, chain restaurants and is neighbored to the south by the Collinsville Crossing shopping center.

For years, the center has often partnered with the former Holiday Inn next door. It was the center of a state controversy when the owners neglected to repay the state for its construction money and eventually were prosecuted on fraud charges. The hotel has since been purchased and remodeled by the Doubletree chain and is now a "flagship" hotel, according to community developer Paul Mann.

At one time, Mann said, the city was looking to bring in another full-service hotel to perhaps attach to the Gateway Center -- a hospitality study had shown that the center could support about 240 more full-service rooms. But the economy didn't help, Mann said, and that plan is on the far back burner.

"There is still a hole there," he said.

Trucano, who is now on the Gateway Center's board, said she thinks in a way, it's the Gateway Center that spurred Collinsville along into its current development. "I'm happy it's proven not to be the white elephant people thought it would be," she said. "I had one gentleman I worked with back then who tried to talk me out of voting for it. ... Years later, he told me he had to say that I was right and he was wrong."

Contact reporter Elizabeth Donald at edonald@bnd.com or (618) 659-0985.

Newstex ID: KRTB-0023-42440881