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Renovations complete at Indiana Convention Center
Grand opening Thursday, 20 Jan 2011 A grand opening celebrating the $275 million dollar renovation and expansion of the Indiana Convention Center will be held at 9:30 Thursday morning in Indianapolis. It will take place in the new three-story glass cube entrance on the west side of Capitol Avenue. A walkway now connects the Convention Center to Lucas Oil Stadium. The combination of both sites means Indianapolis will be able to offer 3.4 million square feet of exhibit and meeting space. That makes it one of the largest convention center complexes in the nation. With nearly 350,000 square feet of exhibit space added to the convention center, pushes it from 32nd largest in the United States to 16th. The facility, when combined with exhibit space at Lucas Oil Stadium, will have a total of 1.2 million square feet of exhibit and meeting space. For a sense of the size of the expanded Indiana Convention Center and neighboring Lucas Oil Stadium, imagine being able to walk through six Walmart supercenters looking at row after row of displays. It all adds up to 1.2 million square feet of space, including 749,000 square feet of exhibit space that will rank Indianapolis as the 16th-largest convention venue in the nation, up from 32nd. It's a mind-boggling amount of room to roam. But artistic flourishes and conveniences designed to give visitors a warm Hoosier welcome still shine through. "If the new Indianapolis International Airport is the front door to Indiana, then the Indiana Convention Center is like the living room to receive and welcome people to our state," said William A. Brown Jr. of Ratio Architects, the expansion's design team leader. A larger Indiana Convention Center should enable Indianapolis convention bookers to attract and retain the "whopper" events that were showcased to justify the $275 million addition that officially opened Thursday, January 20, 2011. One of the most obvious examples is the locally based Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association, which will bring its fall trade show back to Indianapolis in September and again in 2012. CEDIA, which attracts 25,000 visitors, left the city in 2005 because it had outgrown the center and is making good on a promise to return after the expansion is finished.
Wander Indiana Take the tunnel connecting the convention center to Lucas Oil Stadium, and you'll be greeted by the expansion's largest piece of art: a 300-foot-long, 12-foot-high glowing wall of mostly green and orange glass. Step back and take a broad look, and it begins to take shape as an abstract view of Indiana laid on its side, as seen from an airplane. Indianapolis artist Jeff Laramore dubbed his creation "Indiana Landscape." Some viewers may imagine the blue of Lake Michigan at one end, with the blue of the Ohio River at the other. And a big blob in the middle as the Indianapolis metro area. Or maybe not. Laramore leaves the interpretation to each viewer. "Some people want to read specific cities and roads into it, but it can be interpreted in many ways," he said. "It is intended to be a celebration of Indiana's plains."
Shiny welcome A three-story glass atrium, dubbed the "Cube," is one of the most striking new architectural features of the sprawling center. With more than 250 panes of glass gleaming along Capitol Avenue, it becomes the most inviting of several primary entrances. Brown said the jewel-box concept entryway echoes other squares and boxes of stone, steel and glass that line the building's exterior. Entering the building from almost any direction, visitors will find cafe kiosks to take a coffee break or grab a bite of lunch.
More to come Outside the convention center, another welcoming spot is developing. Work began this month on the $12.5 million reconstruction of Georgia Street, which will create a large outdoor destination for public gatherings and sports celebration just in time for the 2012 Super Bowl at Lucas Oil Stadium. City officials have said the section of Georgia, closed to traffic, will become a "fan zone" for the Super Bowl and a place for all NFL teams to sell merchandise.
The addition of the 1,005-room J.W. Marriott hotel, set to open Feb. 4 on the west edge of downtown, gives the city another advantage when courting conventions. Once the hotel complex is finished, roughly 4,700 hotel rooms will be connected via skywalk to the convention center and Lucas Oil Stadium, which further encourages visitors to walk instead of drive to their destinations. More hotel rooms not only gives the city leverage to host a large event such as the 2012 Super Bowl, but also more flexibility to accommodate multiple meetings concurrently.
The Indiana Convention Center expansion sits on the footprint of the RCA Dome. The Dome closed in April 2008 and was demolished.
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