There were cynics who asked why $270 million needed to be spent on a convention center in Hartford and insisted that the facility was unlikely to draw big events. They have been quieted.
The Connecticut Convention Center, which opened two years and a month ago, scored more than double the events it projected in its first year. Despite the difficulty renting space in a facility that was not yet built and which was –- and is still –- surrounded by loud, dusty construction sites, it signed 381 events in its first year. And it hasn’t looked back.
But let’s not allow all that success to blur the larger mission of the convention center: to boost the city and region’s economy.
As the anchor of the Adriaen’s Landing development, still years from completion, the convention center carries the city’s best chance for bringing out-of-towners here to patronize restaurants, shops, theaters and museums in between meetings. That, after all, is what those millions in state and city funding are for.
Mostly, the facility honors that mission. Wander into the lobby and a helpful desk attendant offers directions and recommendations for restaurants and arts events around the city. Log onto the Web site and get linked to enjoyhartford.com, of the Greater Hartford Convention & Visitors Bureau, which allows users to search for lodging and dining options. That, and the free blue shuttles that stop at the curb right outside on Columbus Boulevard, gives visitors an easy opportunity to experience what Hartford has to offer.
But there’s a lingering question for visitors. When they return to the Convention Center later in the day, will they be welcome?
Try, for instance, leaving a morning meeting in search of lunch. The natural destination, for anyone who asks around a bit, is the Arch Street Tavern, a bustling joint nearby with an array of good sandwiches and the lubricant of good business: beer.
If you’re headed to Arch Street in a hurry, they offer take-out at the bar. It’s very convenient.
Until you get back across the street.
The Waterford Group, in an attempt to give further exclusivity to the slim array of eating options on the convention center’s premises, bans visitors from bringing food in from elsewhere. The practice — of having security guards tell visiting businesspeople to eat outside on the sidewalk — would be laughed at in the bustling urban hubs that Hartford emulates.
But for all the convention center’s success, eating there is like eating at an airport, in that visitors have no recourse for few choices and high prices. There is a Starbucks in the upstairs lobby, which is great for coffee and overpriced sandwiches. There is Vivo, in the Marriott, which is great to wine-and-dine someone over an hour or so of exorbitantly priced paninis and pasta. The banquet hall has a food stand in the back that sells burgers and hot dogs fit for the town fair.
We are not food critics (professionally, anyway) and others may like these options better than we do, but trapping visitors inside like they are in the departures terminal is no way to sell Hartford or to generate traffic to local businesses.
The current practice of turning them away and telling them to come back when they’re finished isn’t any way to treat a guest.
If the Waterford Group really wants to connect the convention center to the city –- which is what we thought we were all paying for –- it will give local joints like Arch Street a chance and keep the convention center cynics quiet.
