More about the DC Convention Hotel

This is the major building on the site for the proposed Convention Hotel across the street from the Washington Convention Center. United Association of Journeymen & Apprentices of the Plumbing, Pipefitting,Sprinkler Fitting Industry of the United States & Canada, 901 Massachusetts Avenue N.W. Photo from Amazon.com yellowpages.

I hate to sound too pro-development, but Linda Cropp's idea of putting a Convention Hotel not immediately next to the Convention Center is a disaster. See "City starts negotiating for new hotel" in today's Examiner.

She has talked about this for awhile (see "Waiting for a Middle-Ground Breaking" by Steven Pearlstein, although this was instigated by the well-connected architect Ted Mariani, see "Pressing for a new Hotel") because of the ministrations of various people in the development community.

Well, I have two contra-points:

1. The reason that Baltimore has to build another "Convention" Hotel is the first one they funded wasn't built next to the Convention Center, but "quite a" distance away (any distance is too far when you're not accustomed to walking). Proper siting is essential.

2. The American Planning Association conference in DC in 2004 forced me to rethink the whole "Convention Hotel" matter. Big conferences are best located in one place, even if it is a couple buildings next to each other. When APA selected DC, annual meeting attendance was significantly smaller, and remember that convention sites are selected years in advance (usually 3-5 years before the actual convention is held in a particular city).
By the time the conference in DC came to be, attendance was maybe 1,000 more people than had been planned for and and they added the use of the Shoreham Hotel--about one mile away from the headquarters hotel, the Washington Hilton--as the secondary location for sessions, because the Hilton had no more capacity for meeting rooms.

There were some amazing programs scheduled at the Shoreham. But hardly anybody saw them. Because of the inconvenience of leaving early from a session to catch a shuttle to get from one place to the other, most people didn't bother leaving the Hilton site to attend sessions at the Shoreham.

When you have limited funds, it's extremely important to use them right. It's extremely difficult to make people do what you want them to do, rather than to shape what they prefer to do already.