New convention center design revealed at Council

Tricia Tatro, director of the Austin Convention Center, promised during Tuesday’s City Council work session a “world-class design” and the “first net-zero carbon convention center in the world.”

Katy Zamesnik, assistant director of the convention center, told Council that Austin is the 11th-largest city in the United States but has the 66th-largest convention center. After the reconstruction, the city will have the 35th-largest convention center, she said, making it much more competitive. The revised building will allow the city to host larger events and multiple events at the same time, she said.

The current building will close in April and the new building “will reopen for the spring festival season in 2029,” according to Zamesnik. She added that they are calling it “Unconventional ATX.”

Other members of the team planning the demolition of Austin’s current convention center, and construction of the new one, revealed their plans in broad strokes. Architects Larry Speck with Page Architects and Mark Reddington with LMN Architects described the new convention center in glowing terms, including making the building LEED Gold. LEED, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, “is the world’s most widely used green building rating system. LEED certification provides a framework for healthy, highly efficient, and cost-saving green buildings, which offer environmental, social and governance benefits.”

Today’s convention center has 365,000 square feet of rentable space. The new convention center will include 550,000 square feet of indoor space plus 70,000 square feet of outdoor space, including some parklike areas that will be available to the public, Speck said.

The demolition and reconstruction has previously been estimated to cost $1.26 billion, and the city plans to pay for that through revenues from the convention center and the hotel occupancy tax. Council Member Marc Duchen told staff it had been six weeks since he requested the financial details and he wondered when he might get those.

Duchen said he would like to have a variety of numbers, including future Hotel Occupancy Tax projections and “the actual details of how that (funding) will work.”

He received this answer from Zamesnik: “We’re happy to provide that just as soon as we possibly can,” without giving him a definite date.

Council Member Ryan Alter also had a few questions. The architects said they would be reusing a lot of materials from the current building, noting that while doing so is good for the environment, it may cost more. Alter asked, “How much of existing materials are you going to reuse?” There was no specific answer to that question, but Speck gave a list of a variety of materials they plan to reusing the new building.

Speck said he walked through the convention center with a demolition contractor, “talking about what is easy to save and what is not easy,” and talking about where they will store the materials that they save. Speck said he had never been on a project like this. “So we have like 80 75-foot trusses that are structural members in the existing building that we are saving … to reuse. We have 75,000 square feet of metal panels – really high-quality metal panels. … We’re saving all of that and planning on using them as external materials on the building,” he said.

District 6 Council Member Krista Laine told staff it was really important to her constituents to have an express bus service for people to visit, and that it would be especially helpful for workers. “I hope that will be part of the transportation conversation,” she said.

The only citizen who showed up to discuss the convention center was Bill Bunch, who has criticized the project for several years. He was representing himself, not any organization. He accused the city of hiding information about the project, specifically arguing that the city could find the money to move well-loved murals on the outside of the building if they would put some effort into it.

The city has selected 10 local artists to provide art for the new convention center.

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