Javits Complex Expected to Add Billion in Revenues : N.Y. Center in Fierce Bid for Trade Shows

It is one of the most dramatic civic structures of the decade, a delicate yet massive building whose architectural roots reach back to London’s landmark Crystal Palace.

New York’s Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, which opens April 9, is so big that the Statue of Liberty could stand in its lobby without bumping its torch.

“The international capital of the world--and that is New York City--deserves the best convention center in the world, and now we have it,” boasts Mayor Edward I. Koch in an elaborate color brochure extolling its virtues.

Striking Presence

By daylight, the building’s acres of dark glass reflect New York City’s impressive skyline. After dark, the glow of its interior lighting reinforces its striking presence on Manhattan’s West Side at 34th hard against the Hudson River.

But it is more than a major architectural achievement. It is the latest and most spectacular example of intense competition between cities for trade shows and the tourist business that goes with them--a $20-billion-a-year prize.

Spurred by potential revenues, more than 40 cities across the nation, including Los Angeles, are scrambling to build, modernize or enlarge convention facilities. The massive projects bring together politicians, planners, architects, developers and unions in civic marriages and civic spats that can can make or break careers.

New York’s Convention and Visitors Bureau expects the Javits Convention Center--already 80% booked through 1992--to generate at least $1 billion a year in hotel, restaurant, entertainment and other revenues. Economic planners estimate that the center will produce at least 31,000 new jobs and almost $150 million in fresh taxes.

Second-Largest Facility

With its 1.8 million square feet of space, the Javits center is the second-largest single-building exhibition facility in the United States. The largest is Chicago’s McCormick Place, which plans, despite big cost overruns, to open a massive new annex in August to accommodate even bigger trade shows.

But, before the ribbon is cut to dedicate the Javits center, there are efforts to increase its space as well.

Recently, center officials met with producers of the Consumer Electronics Show, the nation’s biggest trade show, now held twice a year in Chicago and Las Vegas. As part of their bid to win the electronics show for New York, they said that planners are considering adding up to 200,000 square feet to the Javits center on an adjacent parcel of land.

Other cities are in the race to build. Los Angeles, facing stiff convention competition from Anaheim, Las Vegas, San Francisco and San Diego, recently approved $310 million in financing to more than double the capacity of the Los Angeles Convention Center to 610,000 square feet.

‘Demanding More Space’

“The convention business is booming and trade shows are demanding more and more space,” said Dick Walsh, general manager of the Los Angeles complex. “The expansion is vital to the city’s economic health.”

“Most of the trade shows that exist are getting bigger,” said Gerald Roper, executive vice president and managing director of Chicago’s Convention and Visitors Bureau.” . . . The major corporations have found it is the place to bring the masses together . . . instead of having sales people moving around the country.”

“Industries are growing,” added Dennis Corcoran, vice president of the Consumer Electronics Shows. “It is the most inexpensive way of getting your product and service to the largest number of people and for the buyers to show all the products that are available.”

Soon after New York’s Coliseum opened on Columbus Circle in 1956, the need for a new convention center in Manhattan became apparent. Exhibitors regarded the Coliseum with more than disdain. The architecturally unappealing structure was built on multiple levels, breaking up the flow of exhibitions. Loading docks were inadequate, and representatives of 17 different unions at the center could make demands on exhibitors.

Spanned Two Decades

Development of the Javits Convention Center to put New York back in the race for trade show business spanned almost two decades, and the administrations of four governors and three mayors. Many political and planning outlines were put forth and discarded. Finally, an abandoned railroad yard next to the Hudson River was selected as the site. Now the center serves both as an anchor of stability and a spur for development in the area.

Critics say the building--designed by James Freed of I. M. Pei & Partners--has made the long wait worthwhile.

“The convention center is one of those rare happy coincidences that serves the city’s economic health and also produces a civic architectural monument,” observed Richard Weinstein, dean of the UCLA Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning, and a former member of the New York City Urban Design Group. “It’s rare to get good architecture with good civic projects. Architecture tends to be watered down by politics. This time, architecture rose above politics.”

On day recently, Javits’ widow, Marion, and her children walked on an informal tour with Pei and top convention center executives through the massive building, named after the six-term former senator who died March 7 after a long fight with degenerative nerve disease. Construction workers finishing welding and electricians adjusting lighting shouted greetings. The group stood in the Crystal Palace, a 150-foot high, 60,000-square-foot lobby named after the convention center’s English predecessor. Light streaming in from the glass ceiling softened the structure’s immense size.

“The Crystal Palace outside of London and the great railroad stations are an example of steel skeleton structure,” Pei said. “Here, lightness improves on the concept. Here, glass predominates. It is an important difference.”

The original Crystal Palace was designed chiefly of iron and glass for the 1851 Exposition in Hyde Park by Sir Joseph Paxton.

In the Javits Convention Center, Pei and Freed had the advantage of modern technology. They spun a light web of steel as a frame for the glass ceiling and walls. The steel framework is held together by delicately engineered nodes, as in a Tinker Toy construction.

Historical Significance

As he walked through the building, Pei was asked about its historical significance. “History will remember it as a public building that has been designed with some care,” Pei said. “It is a public building designed to hold conventions, but also a very significant part of the building is for the general public to come to recreate, to meet friends and to learn about New York City.

“No convention center in the country provided for those activities. The structure is very light, very lacy. The amount of glass is great. It is a direct descendant of the Crystal Palace and Penn Station.”

New York’s Pennsylvania Station, also noted for its great areas of glass supported by metal arches, was completed in 1910. Designed by the noted architects McKim, Mead & White as a replica of Rome’s Caracalla Baths, it was regarded as a “civic masterpiece” by critics. Nevertheless, despite heated protests, it was demolished in 1963.

Both the Javits Convention Center and McCormick Place have been plagued by costly delays and complex politics.

Expansion of McCormick Place has been bogged down by political infighting, administrative difficulties and soaring expenses. The addition is now expected to cost $312 million, including at least $60 million in cost overruns. The new annex was scheduled to be ready June 1, and it is still questionable whether it will be ready by Aug. 1, when a major trade show is scheduled to use the space.

Forces Resignations

Disenchanted with the way the project was progressing, the Illinois state Legislature forced members of the McCormick Place’s board to resign and created a new board of directors headed by former Republican Gov. Richard B. Ogilvie to oversee the project.

The delays were so serious that the sponsors of the Consumer Electronics Shows considered shifting the giant exposition from Chicago to Las Vegas completely for a year until the addition to McCormick Place was finished. But, on such short notice, Las Vegas couldn’t provide all the needed facilities.

The Javits Convention Center had its beginnings during the administration of former Mayor John V. Lindsay, who soon became aware of the Coliseum’s problems. Blueprints for various sites were drawn, plans for a bond issue were prepared. But Lindsay decided not to run for mayor again, and Abraham D. Beame, the city comptroller, who later became mayor, held up the bond issue, saying the proposed rate was too high. During the 1970s, when New York City faced its fiscal crisis, plans for a convention center were put aside.

Meanwhile, Chicago rebuilt McCormick Place, other cities expanded their convention facilities--and New York City suffered.

In 1979, under Mayor Koch and former Gov. Hugh Carey, the idea of a new convention center was revived. But as plans progressed, there was bickering and divided management. Construction problems caused delays--and higher costs.

‘It Was a Challenge’

At one point, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo asked Thomas Galvin, who had been instrumental in planning the aborted convention center during the Lindsay years, to return from Dallas where he was completing a $1-billion office and hotel complex, to help rescue the project.

“To say the least, it was a challenge,” said Galvin, a former head of New York’s Board of Standards and Appeals.

The project had been plagued by warring politicians and there was no longer any hope of meeting deadlines. The task was made more difficult by a change of leadership in the Urban Development Corp., the parent agency for the project. Richard Kahan, a convention center supporter, was replaced by William Stern, Cuomo’s chief campaign fund-raiser, who had never directed a major construction effort.

Eventually, Galvin and Stern fought. After bitter criticism of the Javits center and Galvin, Stern returned to private life.

Five days after the ribbon cutting, Galvin, who calls Stern’s departure “no loss,” will resign to become president of a realty subsidiary of the Xerox Corp.

“I did what I set out to do, which was rescue the center and get it built,” he said. “I’ll leave it to others to fight over the spoils, which, if this is New York, I am sure they will do.”

Staff writer Larry Green in Chicago and researcher Siobhan Flynn in New York contributed to this article.