Talk of Ann Arbor convention center raises many questions

Building a convention center in downtown Ann Arbor has become a juicy topic of discussion as of late… one with plenty of opinions on both side of the issue.

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What’s being envisioned depends on who you ask – but the common thread appears to be the need for a banquet facility that can feed 1,000 or more people and has meeting and exhibition space, preferably downtown and possibly connected to a hotel.

Currently, local nonathletic and nonuniversity facilities can at best accommodate a seated group of roughly between 500 and 600. That puts Ann Arbor out of the running to land dozens of larger conferences and conventions that, if they came here, could means millions of dollars worth of money pumped into the economy.

“This is not going to be Cobo Hall or McCormick Place – we’re not going to do car shows or boat shows,” Bernstein said. “The hotels we have here now are terrific, and this is not a knock on them, but what we are missing is a trophy hotel.”

Read the rest of the story here.