Testimony
of
Richard T. Anderson, President
New York Building Congress
Before
New York State Convention Center Development Corporation
on General Project Plan
Proposed Jacob K. Javits Convention Center Expansion and
Renovation Civic Project
Public Hearing

May 15, 2006

The New York Building Congress welcomes the opportunity to endorse, with enthusiasm, the General Project Plan for expansion and renovation of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. This long-overdue project will bring enormous benefits to the City of New York. These include job opportunities for more than 300,000 people who currently work in the hospitality industry, as well as important construction jobs and additional tax revenues to support essential City services.

An expanded Javits Center will diversify and strengthen the economic base of the entire New York region. The existing Javits Center is simply too small and outdated. Competitor cities are outpacing New York, and this City is losing out every day that we delay the Javits expansion. In the last 20 years, the Javits Center has slipped from being ranked the fifth largest facility in the country to the sixteenth. New York cannot wait any longer to expand the Javits Center.

An expanded Javits Center will provide a much more attractive and competitive international convention center worthy of the greatest city in the world. To this end, the General Project Plan is well conceived and worthy of immediate support by the Convention Center Development Corporation. It will more than double the size of the Javits Center; enormously increase meeting and exhibit space; increase exhibition space by 45 percent; and add additional pre-function and back-of-the-house space. Best of all, the plan has room for growth.

Moreover, the Javits expansion will stimulate revitalization of the Hudson Yards area, building on the re-zoning approved last year.

We urge the Convention Center Development Corporation to approve the General Project Plan and do everything possible to expedite its construction. After more than a decade of deliberation, the time is now to move Javits expansion to reality. Further delay will only increase construction costs, which are currently being inflated by a variety of factors.

Let me conclude with a word about well-intentioned but misguided alternative plans currently being proposed. None appear to be advanced within the design parameters of the General Project Plan, which the Javits team has addressed so brilliantly. Planning without cost and other constraints is meaningless and irresponsible. The plan under consideration is impressive and should be approved expeditiously.

Thank you.