If we build it, will even more people come?

Attendees fill the trade show floor at the 2015 International Consumer Electronics Show on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2015, at Las Vegas Convention Center.

How Las Vegas stacks up

Las Vegas has among the most convention center square footage in the country, but it isn't alone in offering massive facilities. Here's how other convention cities compare, in terms of existing convention center space.

• Atlanta: 3.9 million square feet

• Las Vegas: 3.2 million square feet

• Chicago: 3.2 million square feet

• Orlando: 2.1 million square feet

• New Orleans: 1.1 million square feet

• Phoenix: 900,000 square feet

• San Diego: 819,815 square feet

• Dallas: 724,526 square feet

• Washington, D.C.: 703,000 square feet

• Miami: 644,800 square feet

Source: Cvent

Las Vegas tourism officials have a clear goal: They want to expand and renovate their convention facilities to meet demand for more space from trade shows, capture new business and fend off competition from other cities.

But accomplishing their objective isn’t so simple.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has yet to secure the $1.4 billion it needs for planned construction and renovation, nor has it designed a new facility. And casino giant Las Vegas Sands Corp., which runs its own massive convention center on the Strip, is pushing back against the project.

Nonetheless, the LVCVA made substantial progress this year when it bought the Riviera, across the street from the Las Vegas Convention Center, for $182.5 million. Funds are in place to tear down the shuttered resort next year and prepare the site for use as outdoor exhibit space by early 2017.

What comes after that — transforming the Riviera site from outdoor exhibit space into a new convention facility — hinges on the work of a tourism group recently created by Gov. Brian Sandoval. Called the Southern Nevada Tourism Infrastructure Committee, the group of public officials and industry leaders will examine the region’s existing and proposed convention centers, arenas, stadiums and transportation options, and submit a report to the governor about the valley’s infrastructure needs. The report also is expected to include recommendations about funding for the convention center.

At stake in the convention project, officials say, is Southern Nevada’s ability to maintain its market-leading trade show business, which is vital to filling hotel rooms and sustaining the local economy.

Why the LVCVA wants the Riviera site to become convention space

For 21 consecutive years, Las Vegas has been ranked the top trade show destination in the country by the Trade Show News Network.

But the convention authority is worried another city might poach that bragging right.

“Other major cities across the country and internationally have identified Las Vegas as the primary competition and the shows held in Las Vegas as primary targets for new business,” officials wrote in the master plan for the convention center project.

Furthermore, some major trade shows say they’re running out of space in Las Vegas.

The International Consumer Electronics Show, for example, is capping attendance for the first time ever for its upcoming show in January. Karen Chupka, senior vice president of International CES and corporate business strategy, said her group worried that if the number of attendees continued to increase, show producers would not be able to move people around efficiently.

Attendance to CES grew 11 percent from 2014 to 2015, with 176,000 people registering last year, Chupka said. CES already uses the Las Vegas Convention Center, Sands Expo Center and Mandalay Bay Convention Center, and the show could take up even more room.

“We do feel like there’s a need for more space,” Chupka said. “As I look out over the next year or two, we don’t have much (room for) growth for raw exhibit space in the future. We’re already trying to figure out how we’re going to accommodate that for 2017 and 2018.”

The Las Vegas Convention Center doesn’t have much more to offer. A study by Cordell Corp., which is helping the LVCVA manage the convention project, found that the center’s exhibit space is maxed out during the main seasons for trade shows.

Erecting a new convention facility on the site of the Riviera is just one component of the project. A subsequent phase entails renovating the 56 year-old Las Vegas Convention Center, which desperately needs a face-lift. The roof of Central Hall hasn’t been replaced since the building opened in 1959, and it leaks during rainstorms. A third of the convention center’s 46 restrooms, built before 1970, have never been renovated. Food service facilities are inadequate.

But the authority is focused first on building new space, so trade shows can be relocated while the existing facility is redone. That would allow Las Vegas to avoid losing business that could go elsewhere during renovation work.

But does Las Vegas really need more convention space?

Las Vegas Sands Corp., owner of the Venetian and Palazzo, criticizes the convention center expansion on two fronts.

First, while dwindling room is a problem for the Las Vegas Convention Center, it isn’t for Sands. The Sands Expo Center remains 12 percent away from maxing out its space capacity, according to documents filed with the tourism infrastructure committee. It also is 10 percent away from its maximum group room occupancy and contains “untapped potential for multiple-location opportunities,” officials said.

Secondly, Sands officials disagree philosophically about how the convention center likely will be funded. Sands officials feel tax dollars should be used to improve local infrastructure such as the airport, create mass transportation options and even fund a major stadium — not, as the company’s presentation put it, to “compete with the private sector.”

The convention and visitors authority is funded largely by hotel room taxes; it’s likely the expansion will require some form of public funding as well.

Still, there is reason to think Las Vegas can accommodate a substantial increase in convention space.

Josh Smith, a commercial real estate consultant for the gaming division of Colliers International, pointed to another of the city’s major casino companies, MGM Resorts International, and its recently completed expansion of the Mandalay Bay Convention Center.

“MGM doesn’t just build that thing because they want to just build it,” Smith said. “They build it because they think they can fill it.”

Indeed, MGM Resorts CEO Jim Murren said Mandalay Bay’s new space already is fully booked for next year, and his company is evaluating how to make the best use of convention areas across properties, because “as much space as we have, we don’t have enough space.”

MGM Resorts views the authority’s convention project, which will give the Las Vegas Convention Center an address on the Strip for the first time, in a more positive light than Sands.

Murren said he was taught by MGM Resorts’ founder, the late Kirk Kerkorian, that “what’s good for Las Vegas is good for MGM.” So he doesn’t feel threatened if event planners choose the Las Vegas Convention Center over Mandalay Bay.

“This is not a zero-sum game, and any company that looks at it that way is looking at it in a very selfish way,” Murren said. “I feel very strongly that the convention center not only needs to be upgraded — because there are parts of it that I am not proud of walking through — it needs to be expanded, because there are (more) shows that we can get.”

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