New Orleans’ Convention Center Open for Business Again

A week of major conventions, including the big American Library Association meeting, recently attracted about 24,000 visitors and pumped an estimated $25 million into New Orleans’ economy, which is still staggering from Hurricane Katrina, tourism officials said.

But perhaps more importantly, the ALA meeting showed convention planners from other organizations that New Orleans and its revamped convention center, which was used as a hurricane evacuation shelter, is again a capable player in the hospitality industry.

“What they gave us was an opportunity to show we had the ability to put on a major convention,” Stephen Perry, president of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau, said Wednesday.

The convention and related tourism businesses had become the city’s chief economic driver before Katrina, pushing $9.6 billion annually into the economy and providing an estimated 126,000 direct and indirect jobs in the region.

An estimated 25,000 people unexpectedly took refuge in the Convention Center following Hurricane Katrina. Conditions at the giant building were horrendous.

The Convention Center was not expected to be a shelter but was pressed into service by thousands fleeing the flooding of the city that followed the Aug. 29 storm. The primary refuge of last resort had been the Louisiana Superdome, which lost part of its roof and was quickly overwhelmed with people seeking shelter.

Storm victims suffered in the heat and squalid conditions at the Convention Center for days before the National Guard finally delivered food and water. During the resulting chaos, there were reports of widespread violence – rapes, beatings, murders – that turned out to be highly exaggerated and, in many cases, flatly false.

It was almost a week before those stranded at the center were evacuated. They left behind mounds of garbage and personal possessions. The building had to be sanitized and completely renovated before it hosted its first small convention in January and several Mardi Gras balls in February.

ALA brought about 18,000 participants to town, while a meeting of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics brought another 2,000. At the same time, the Air & Waste Management Association had about 4,000, Perry said.

The ALA’s outgoing president, Michael Gorman, called his group’s weeklong convention a “smashing success” and said he was impressed by the “astounding warmth and gratitude of the people of New Orleans.”

Gorman said convention representatives of 35 other organizations visited the ALA meeting to see how it progressed.

“Unless those people are crazy, they are going back to their associations and telling them that New Orleans is a wonderful place to have a convention,” Gorman said.

Mary Cincotta, a Kansas City, Missouri-based sales manager with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, which had a booth at the ALA meeting, said she “wasn’t terribly enthusiastic” when the ALA reaffirmed its decision to have a New Orleans meeting last October.

“But after attending the conference, I think it was a great idea that they left it there,” Cincotta said. “The downtown area and the French Quarter area have done a great job of coming back to life. The people were obviously glad to have us there and went out of the way to make us feel welcome.”

Katrina took out the fall 2005 and spring 2006 convention schedule, leaving the meetings going into the traditionally slower summer months. There are 14 other major meetings booked for the convention center, along with smaller meetings at hotels, for the remainder of 2006.

The two largest are the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship in July, which is expected to attract 25,000, and the National Association of Realtors in November, with another 25,000.

Associated Press Writer Janet McConnaughey contributed to this report.