Good morning and welcome to the December 10th, 2025 Economic Development and the Arts Subcommittee.

I will call the meeting to order at 1003 and turn to our city attorney, David Benton, to discuss public comment.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

For citizen comment, members of the public may address the subcommittee for up to three minutes on issues of interest or concern to them.

The open meeting law permits subcommittee members to listen to the comments or prohibits members from discussing or acting on matters presented.

Madam Chair, in the event there's any sign-ups for agenda items, members may speak up to two minutes on agenda items.

Comments must be related to the agenda item and the action being considered.

Council and staff cannot discuss or comment on matters being related to planning investigations, claims of litigations.

Additionally, if any member in the public who appears before the subcommittee in their capacity as a lobbyist, must disclose that fact to the subcommittee.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much, sir.

And now I'd like to um introduce our interpreter, Elsie Dorte, and allow her an opportunity to introduce herself.

Thank you, uh Madam Chair O'Brien.

My name is El C Duarte, and I will be providing Spanish interpretation during today's economic development and arts subcommittee session.

I will now take a moment to address our Spanish speaking audience.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, I'll see.

Our next item on our agenda is called to the public, and we have one virtual speaker, Jenny Ann Sumner.

Do we have Jenny Ann?

Okay, Jennianne, the floor is yours.

Madam Chair, members of the subcommittee, I just want to express my appreciation for your consideration last month on an update to the refurbishing of the public art and the old cross-cut canal park from McDowell to Thomas Road.

I look forward to the future update.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Jenny Ann, for your testimony.

Item one on our agenda is approval of minutes from the November twelfth, 2025 subcommittee meeting.

Do you have a motion for approval?

Move to approve.

Second.

We have a motion and a second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Um any nays.

Hearing none, the motion passes unanimously.

Item number two on our agenda is the convention mark and we try that again.

Thank you for the opportunity to come and give you an update on the convention center activity.

And we also want to spend a little bit of time talking about the convention market in general.

Joining me to my left is Ron Price, President and CEO of Visit Phoenix, who is a partner of ours in selling this destination.

Really good partner, and uh you'll throughout this presentation you'll hear about some of the fruits of their labor as we move forward.

So this morning, what I'd like to talk about is a little bit about visitor spending to give you an idea of the overall impact of the convention center on the market uh since the expansion was complete.

I'll also spend a little bit of time talking about this past summer, which was a historic summer for us as far as activity is concerned at the convention center.

Then I'll also spend a little bit of time talking about some upcoming events, some notable events that we'll have at the convention center.

And then we'll spend some time talking about the competitive destinations, our comp set, to give you an idea of what is happening in the market in general, and then we'll have some time at the end for some questions.

So when talking about the overall impact of the Phoenix Convention Center since the expansion, it's important to talk about the attendance, the number of people that have walked through our doors.

Just to give you some brief background on the history, the convention center expanded with the final phase of the expansion being complete in 2009, and that resulted in a tripling of the convention center's space.

At that same time, the downtown Sheraton Hotel opened, giving us a significant uh boost as far as our status in the market.

And uh in 2009, that was the first year since the completion of expansion through 2023.

You can see on the slide in front of you the amount of attendance that would have taken place at the convention center had we not expanded.

And let me explain that.

Uh for the the expansion, that it was funded by the state and the city.

They both participated by contributing half of the money needed for the expansion.

And to justify the state's investment in the convention center annually, there's a requirement from a state statute, I believe it's ARS 9-626 that requires a feasible, a feasibility study to be completed to understand the economic impact for that year of the convention center.

It's basically to give a return on investment to the state.

Um, and in that study, which is completed by HVS, uh, they look at the they looked at the number of attendees that attended the convention center in the final years before the expansion, so 2003 through 2005, to get an average of the attendance, and this is back when we called the civic plaza, so before the convention expansion.

And then what that does is that gives you a baseline to determine what we refer to as the no-build scenario.

So, what would have taken place as far as action at the convention center had we not expanded.

And that's what you see in front of you.

So, over since 2009 through the last completed year of this study, which was 2023, it was about 411,000 attendees that uh would have walked through the convention center had it not expanded.

So, again, that's what we call the no-build scenario.

So, to show you the impact of the expansion, this gives you the actual numbers as far as the number of people that attended events at the convention center over that same period of time.

Um, and again, that's a significant improvement, and we're looking at 3.2 million people compared to the 411,000 that would have been had we not expanded.