Over at our Locker Room sister site, Chad Adams has some fun with Charlotte’s Convention Center woes. Well, maybe not fun, but at least some common sense. Riffing on a Charlotte Business Journal story on how hard it is to book the building, Chad notes that both the Greensboro Koury Center and Wilmington Hilton are about twice as busy as the Convention Center. The Center has a 42% occupancy rate so far this fiscal year.
Then, of course, there’s the way the drive to find something, anything, to fill up the building is spinning off all kinds of bad policy — like paying groups to come to Charlotte, to bidding for the NASCAR Hall of Fame (in many ways, just a cover-story for higher hotel-motel taxes to help fill up the Center), to the $40 million trolley, to the $450 million light rail line, which is still slated to end its run in the middle of the convention center, provided enough money can for found to pay for that trick.
Why? Because then people will have to visit the building.
