Gone are the days when a venue’s ability to host large-scale events was measured on square footage alone. Today conference planners increasingly search for event venues that offer size plus something more—designs that allow them to make a meeting feel, well, less like a meeting.
When long-standing New York City nightclub Marquee reopened as a music-focused venue in January, the layout was rethought to also make it better for business events. Owners wanted to maintain a hip club atmosphere but create a better sense of arrival and a space that was more transformable and adaptive for corporate groups.
Josh Held of Josh Held Design handled the redesign. “We took a club with a funky entrance—you entered in front of a bar packed with people, there was no procession—and took the roof off and raised it,” Held says. The 1,200-person space was converted into a warehouse-like room with 28-foot ceilings and industrial design elements. Upon entering, guests encounter a long procession that leads them to the middle of the expansive open space—as Held puts it “channeling the exhilaration of stumbling upon an underground music venue,” but on a much grander level.
Inside, there’s a large raised stage, a wraparound catwalk for performers, and a large LED screen behind the DJ booth, plus five movable rigs of LEDs on the ceiling that can be programmed to flow from one to the other. Corporate clients can brand the space with logos or other content for meetings or post-conference parties that are on-brand while delivering a unique ambiance.
In Southern California, the Anaheim Convention Center was remodeled earlier this year, and the most significant addition was a 100,000-square-foot outdoor campus known as the Grand Plaza. With lush landscaping, expansive walkways, and Âdramatic water features, the plaza serves as a pedestrian esplanade spanning the distance between the convention center and adjacent hotels, but it also allows planners to move part of their conventions outdoors.
“This area has literally opened up a new menu of options for events and ideas to explore and push the traditional enclosed boundaries of an event,” says Elaine Cali, vice president of communications at the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor and Convention Bureau.
Since opening in January, the plaza has hosted a variety of events, including food-truck nights, gourmet sit-down dinners, rock concerts, and evenings with the symphony. For conference planners, it offers a chance to break up a long day by bringing the group outdoors without having to travel—or even the possibility of scheduling an entire trade show outside.
New Orleans’s Saenger Theatre reopens this fall following a $52 million renovation, the main focus of which is emphasizing the original ornate design while also enlarging the stage house itself to accommodate large touring productions and other sizable events.
“With the bigger stage we have a lot of new options for trade events,” says David Skinner, general manager of ACE Theatrical, the group that oversees the theater. If, say, a car company wants to do a reveal on stage, there will be room for the production in addition to 2,800 seats for guests. Groups will also have the option to take advantage of the venue’s new catering facilities and host a sit-down meal on the stage itself, which can seat 300, or the venue can host larger groups by building scaffolding to expand over the seating area.
“It’s kind of a neat thing to do to have dinner on the stage looking out at the theater,” says Skinner, who envisions the dinner-on-stage option being used for corporate parties and Âfund-raisers.
The new home of the College Football Hall of Fame, slated to open next fall in Atlanta, is a 94,256-square-foot development adjacent to the Georgia World Congress Center—one of the largest convention facilities in the country—with Centennial Olympic Park, the World of Coca-Cola, Georgia Aquarium, and a massive Omni hotel just steps away. With that kind of a group-luring location, the space is being designed with dual-use facilities that hold equal appeal to gridiron groupies as well as event planners.
The centerpiece of the venue is a 45-yard indoor football field that will host periodic sports presentations and is also equipped to hold as many as 1,200 for a reception or 700 for a seated dinner on the field. With a glass roof and a surrounding glass walkway, additional visitors can look down at the field from the mezzanine area, and the adjacent 4K/3D Game Day Theater will seat as many as 150 for corporate meetings and presentations.
