A rendering of the new conference center at Allen County War Memorial Coliseum in Fort Wayne, Ind.
After some seven years in the planning, Allen County War Memorial Coliseum in Fort Wayne, Ind., unveils its new 50,000-sq.-ft. Conference Center with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and open house on Dec. 18.
“The space turned out even better than what we had expected,” said Randy Brown, executive vice president and general manager of the venue. “You have a vision and your mind’s eye of what you think it will be. When you can exceed your own expectations, there’s a wow factor. I mean, we have rented nearly 300 days sight unseen.”
Brown said that the actual construction phase for the project was just over a year and in the words that make every venue professional happy was “ahead of schedule and under budget.” The additional square footage puts the overall complex at more than one million square feet under roof, making it the second largest public assembly facility in Indiana, just behind Lucas Oil Stadium and the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis.
“Technology in this space is second to none,” Brown said. “Some things you might anticipate are drop-down video projectors and drop-down screens so we can put up images of speakers and PowerPoint presentations. It’s the technology related to that. The days of a camera operator standing in the back of the room are gone. Everything is automated with hand-held zoom cameras. An operator sitting in a control room is now operating remotely or multiple cameras remotely.”
Brown also touted the conference center’s LED lighting and an HVAC heating and cooling system powered by Trane called the recovery wheel whereby a wheel pulls the heat and humidity out of the air to be reused and reduce the demand on utilities.
“One of the things I’m most proud of is we built a tasting kitchen,” he said. “This is a space so that our chef and our catering sales manager can meet one on one with a client and talk about a menu. As the chef works with the client going over different entrée options and a menu has been agreed upon, that menu is photographed on a plate and ultimately becomes the standard for the service the night of the event.”
The overall multipurpose event space is 27,169 sq. ft. and is sub-divisible into five smaller spaces. It is contiguous with the venue’s existing expo space and takes the exhibit space to more than 200,000 sq. ft.. The lobby and pre-function space includes 18,000 sq. ft. and is highlighted with lots of glass and a south end building view of Appleseed Park, home to the gravesite for Johnny Appleseed.
Brown said that the hard construction cost for the project was approximately $16 million with another $2-$3 million for FF&E costs. Funding came from earned tax revenues collected within the Professional Sports & Convention Development Area.
The new conference center will be enable the venue to retain clients who have been needing more meeting and exhibit space while at the same time allowing the pursuit of new business. As for the new, state-of-the-art conference center being part of a 60-year-old coliseum, well, looks can be deceiving, according to Brown.
“We’re a 60-year-old building, but like I’ve said there’s not a lot of 60-year-old left,” Brown said. “We’ve been able to maintain the complex as state-of-the-art. The arena is actually 64, but Sports Business Journal does a minor league sports ranking every other year and we were most recently No. 9 and we’ve been No. 1 before and currently No. 3 as far as the 214 minor league sports markets. They said about our arena that with all the improvements we’ve made in blowing the walls out, adding food courts this summer and renovated team rooms and LED lighting that we are the most sophisticated of all the minor league venues.”
The Winter Bridal Spectacular will be held on Jan. 2 as the first event at the new conference center. Prior to that the ribbon-cutting and open house take place on Dec. 18. A jazz combo will play and an open house will give guests an opportunity to see the tasting kitchen and more. The executive chef for Aramark at the venue is Marvin Mosley, and he and Brown will build the momentum for the open house earlier that same morning when they appear on a local television show in a friendly cook-off competition.
“I’m a foodie anyway, but it’s like, ok,” Brown said as he prepares to go against someone he calls “exceptional” and has won a number of major competitions. “We haven’t worked out the details yet, but we’ll showcase the tasting kitchen. That will build more excitement for the ribbon-cutting. “
Not only will 2016 be a busy year for the new conference center, but things start with a bang in January with 24 of the 31 days booked, not counting move in and move out.
“We have everything from the likes of the bridal show to a farm show to a major wrestling event that will have wrestling mats in the space to a volleyball tournament taking the whole expo and also using the conference center,” Brown said. “We’ve designed this truly as multiuse space.”
But a space is not truly multiuse until it hosts the National Alpaca Show, an event that was held at the coliseum years ago and appears to not only be returning in 2016 but beyond that.
“With just the amount of exhibit space we have plus the technology of the conference center they’re not only talking to us about the event in 2016 but they would like to have a regular ongoing relationship with us,” Brown said.
Technically, an alpaca is a domesticated species of South American Camelid with two breeds called the Suri and the Huacaya.
“It’s like a llama, but it’s an alpaca,” Brown said in layman terms. “They are wonderful with soft fur and just gorgeous animals, but their urine is so strong that after two or three days the smell of the building is just … ok, I’ve had enough. It’s like, no alpacas on the new floor, only on the expo side which is a concrete floor.”
Yes, business is about to pick up.
Interviewed for this story: Randy Brown, (260) 482-9502