The expansion of downtown Milwaukee’s convention center has been a long time coming.
The facility, originally known as the Midwest Express Center, was built in phases with the first completed in 1998 and the second in 2000.
A third phase to expand the facility was discussed for many years with no progress.
In January 2018, when Marty Brooks became president and chief executive officer of the Wisconsin Center District, which owns and operates the convention center, the public organization’s board gave him three directives.
One was to run the WCD – which includes the Baird Center (then called the Wisconsin Center), the UWM Panther Arena and Miller High Life Theater – like a private business and make it more financially accountable. The second was to get the organization, which had historically operated as a silo, more involved in the community.
The third was to finally decide when the long-planned convention center expansion project would happen.
Over the years, numerous studies were unsuccessful in advancing the convention center expansion beyond the discussion phase. While competing cities continued to invest in improvements to their convention centers, Milwaukee moved down in the ranks of attractive convention destinations.
“(The board) said, ‘We need you to go forward with this expansion or put it on the back burner and revisit again, but let’s just stop talking about it,” Brooks recalled.
After addressing the first two directives to get the organization in a place where the convention center could be expanded, Brooks took a deeper look at the question of expansion itself.
“I looked at what our competing markets had and saw what kind of business we were, in fact, losing,” he said.
Brooks decided that it was time for the expansion of the convention center to finally move forward, and in April of 2020 – only a couple of weeks after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic – he and WCD got the green light to pursue the long-awaited project.
The $456 million project, built on a former parking lot, doubles the size of the convention center to 1.3 million square feet. The expanded Baird Center – renamed last year as the result of a 15-year naming rights sponsorship by the Milwaukee-based financial services firm – is set to open this month with a grand opening gala on May 16 and public open house on May 18. The facility will open just in time for the 2024 Republican National Convention this summer and will add to the strong momentum of new development in downtown’s Westown neighborhood.
Early booking numbers suggest the expansion is on track to increase the Baird Center’s business by 30% to 50%, but some hospitality experts wonder if Milwaukee’s hotel and flight capacity can support and attract the events needed to fill the added square footage to the convention center.
“There’s a lot of ‘show me’ now,” Brooks said. “The onus is on us and Visit Milwaukee to actually make this thing work because it’s been a lot of talk up to this point.”
Expansion overdue
Compared to similarly sized Midwestern cities, Milwaukee’s convention center has been limited in the scale and number of events it can hold due to its relative lack of space.
With 188,000 square feet of exhibit space and 28 meeting rooms, the existing venue’s capacity is far below some of the Midwest region’s larger centers, such as the America’s Center in St. Louis, with 575,000 square feet of exhibit space and 80 meeting rooms, and the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis, with 566,000 square feet and 71 meeting rooms. It’s also smaller than the convention centers in cities like Columbus, Cleveland and Omaha, which, for instance, has 194,000 square feet of exhibit space.
“We were behind, and we were for at least 10 years,” said Peggy Williams-Smith, president and CEO of Visit Milwaukee. “Our peers have continued to make investments in their convention centers, where we had not.”
Milwaukee was at a point in its development as a convention market in which the convention center’s relative lack of space caused scheduling conflicts with lots of potential events.
“We were turning away as much business as we were booking,” Brooks said. “In order to really remain competitive – if not be more aggressive – we needed to, in essence, double our size.”
The expansion will bring the Baird Center to 300,000 square feet of exhibit space, 52 meeting rooms and 69,500 square feet of ballroom space, up from 37,500 square feet. Funded through county hotel, restaurant and car rental taxes levied by WCD, the project will pay off its debt over 40 years.
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The additional space unlocks a slew of events that the Baird Center was previously too small to hold, such as the Connect Marketplace, which will bring 2,500 meeting and event planning professionals to the city in late August to meet with hotels, convention and visitors bureaus and other industry players.
“We like to bring planners to new spaces and to destinations they might not have seen yet, so this is an opportune time for Milwaukee and, from what I’ve seen, I think this expansion will be huge for their business,” said Tinsley Conway, vice president of events for Connect.
Beyond larger events with more attendees, the additional space will also allow the Baird Center to hold simultaneous or overlapping events, which not only has a big impact on WCD, but also gives a boost to the city’s broader hospitality industry.
Prior to the expansion, the Baird Center might be booked for a total of 13 days for a single event. However, with a five-day move in and four-day move out, that one event generates only four nights of actual economic impact for downtown hotels, restaurants and other businesses that benefit from visitor activity. That will change now that the venue is equipped to have one event occurring while another is loading in or out.
“If a group has a five-day event, while they’re moving in, our hotels aren’t busy with group visits, they have to book their own business,” Williams-Smith said. “Whereas now, we will have more active nights, which means more people are in the hotels, they’re out in the city spending money, and that all helps the cycle.”
WCD expects the expansion will bring an additional 100,000 visitors to Milwaukee annually.
We built it
Designed by Atlanta-based TVS and Milwaukee-based Eppstein Uhen Architects, the expanded Baird Center offers the ultimate in versatility, functionality and style, convention planners say.
The Baird Center’s new entrance area off West Kilbourn Avenue makes a striking impression: three stories high lined with windows and capped with a brass ceiling, complete with a multi-story water feature. Visitors will be greeted by a large set of stadium stairs, which offer a casual seating area and are made of reclaimed timber, part of the project team’s aim to enhance sustainability, pursuing silver LEED building certification. Other sustainability features include a solar roof, stormwater management system, bird-friendly glass and an on-site food digester.
Project leaders worked to integrate artwork throughout the building to bring a sense of place to a structure that otherwise could feel placeless. One of the most prominent is a staircase mural that runs the height of the building and features scenes of Milwaukee’s skyline and Wisconsin’s lakes and rivers.
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“One of our objectives is to represent as much of the state and Milwaukee as we could, because when a lot of people come here, the only thing they see is the airport, their hotel and this place,” Brooks said. “We want to give as much flavor of the state as possible.”
Crafted by a team that has worked on convention centers nationwide, the expansion offers a more modern look and was designed to emulate the architecture seen in world-class cities, project leaders said.
“Sometimes people tour, and they say, ‘I can’t believe I’m in Milwaukee,’” Brooks said.
In the competitive world of attracting events and conventions, hosts want to give convention planners as few reasons to say “no” as possible.
The Baird Center was designed with this in mind, including state-of-the-art color-changing light fixtures and HVAC controls in each subdividable space. A key feature of the expansion is bringing the outside in with large windows in the common areas, exhibit hall and ballroom.
“That is something you don’t see in a lot of convention centers,” Williams-Smith said. “When I’m at a trade show, I’m in a dark room and I don’t even know what the outside looks like because you’re on that trade show floor all day.”
The expansion also adds landscaped terraces around the top-floor ballrooms, a feature that will serve as a standup location for broadcasters and other media covering the Republican National Convention in July.
Project planners predict that the addition of outdoor space, which is only seen in modern convention centers, will be an overall differentiator for Milwaukee.
Moreover, the expansion’s pre-function space will allow visitors to be more comfortable and productive thanks to a range of seating options and power outlets at nearly every table. The expansion also integrates inclusion-focused spaces, such as on-site sensory rooms, nursing mother’s rooms and all-gender restrooms available for clients, guests and employees.
“It seems like they took so many great parts about different convention centers around the country and thought about what parts of convention centers they don’t usually like and corrected them,” Conway said.
Will they come?
Studies done on Milwaukee’s attractiveness as a convention destination show the city has a lot to boast about, primarily its affordability and arts and culture scene. A city’s dining and nightlife, natural attractions, sports teams and museums are all things that planners look at when fielding their options for an event.
“There’s a Brewers game the last night (of Connect Marketplace) and having things that we can promote around the city makes people more excited to go,” Conway said.
She also noted the collaboration between Milwaukee’s hospitality industry and broader business community as a differentiator for Milwaukee; she recalled meeting with leaders of the Deer District and the Harley-Davidson Museum during a site tour of the city.
“Everyone just seems to know each other, even if they’re not directly part of the convention sales team,” she said.
Still, skeptics argue that Milwaukee is lacking in some key metrics that could hinder the Baird Center’s success. Beyond just the space available to use at the convention center, planners also weigh things like flights and hotels to determine where to hold their events, and industry experts say Milwaukee is limited in both respects.
While Milwaukee is advantageously located about 90 minutes away from Chicago, Mitchell International Airport only has 32 direct flights, which is fewer than St. Louis with 74 direct flights, Kansas City with 56 and Columbus and Indianapolis, both with 48, though Milwaukee is competitive with Omaha at 32 and Des Moines at 30.
“Unfortunately, Milwaukee does not have the flights to move people in and out,” said Greg Hanis, hotel industry analyst and president of New Berlin-based Hospitality Marketers International Inc. “That’s something that’s going to have to come in order to support that square footage and bring in major conventions.”
Milwaukee has about 6,200 hotel rooms in the downtown area, according to a report from CoStar, which translates to about 206 hotel rooms per 10,000 square feet of exhibit space. That’s comparatively more than many of Milwaukee’s peer cities, including St. Louis with 139 rooms per 10,000 square feet, Columbus with 134 and Indianapolis with 132, according to a BizTimes calculation using the number of downtown hotel rooms claimed by each city’s respective convention and visitors bureau.
Hotel rooms by competing downtown
1. Minneapolis: 9,000
2. St. Louis: 8,000
3. Indianapolis: 7,500
4. Milwaukee: 6,200
5. Detroit: 5,700
6. Cleveland: 5,100
7. Columbus: 5,000
8. Cincinnati: 3,300
9. Des Moines: 3,100
Source: Downtown hotel rooms claimed by respective convention and visitors bureau
However, while overall hotel count is important, industry experts say the number of rooms available in “convention headquarters” hotels could be more important. Convention headquarters hotels are large hotels located in extremely close proximity to the convention center and, because of their large scale, can commit a high number of rooms to convention groups.
Milwaukee has two of these hotels: the Hilton Milwaukee City Center, with 729 rooms, and the Hyatt Regency, with 481 rooms. Both are connected to the convention center via skywalk, which, in a climate like Milwaukee’s, is the first threshold convention planners are looking to meet, according to Doug Nysse, hospitality industry advisor and director of project and development services with Colliers International | Wisconsin.
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The 481-room Hyatt Regency hotel is connected to the Baird Center via skywalk as one of the convention center’s two primary headquarters hotels.
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“We can’t change the weather, but we can make it as convenient as possible for the folks visiting,” Nysse said. “Planners want to be able to have the conferees as close as possible in as few hotels as possible because it’s more convenient and actually increases the likelihood that they’ll get more conferees to come.”
The second threshold is the number of hotel rooms within walking distance of the convention center; Milwaukee has 2,260 hotel rooms within a half mile of the Baird Center, according to Visit Milwaukee.
“Hotels farther than that generally serve as overflows,” said Hanis.
Milwaukee falls behind many of its peer cities when it comes to rooms available in convention headquarters hotels. Compare the Hilton and Hyatt’s combined 1,210 rooms to peer cities like Indianapolis with a staggering 4,700 hotel rooms connected to the convention center (plus another 800 rooms under construction) and Columbus with 2,700 rooms connected. Milwaukee has significantly more convention headquarters hotel rooms than smaller markets like Omaha with 600 rooms and Des Moines with 330.
In addition to their convenience for attendees, large hotel properties are preferred by planners who try to limit the number of hotel contracts they have to make.
“For a convention coordinator who’s looking to book an event for, say, 1,000 convention goers, and they look at Milwaukee compared to other competitive markets like Indianapolis, Columbus, if those markets have hotels that appear to be more convenient, then those are the markets that are going to get booked,” Nysse said.
That’s been the case for the planners of Connect.
“We have had to split up a lot, we are working with a lot of blocks, but we have been OK for the most part,” Conway said, noting that Connect Marketplace contracted with the Hilton, Hyatt and SpringHill Suites in Westown and The Pfister Hotel and Saint Kate – The Arts Hotel in East Town.
“I don’t necessarily think Milwaukee needs a third (convention headquarters hotel), but it would definitely benefit from one,” she added.
However, getting a modern convention headquarters hotel the size of the Hilton or bigger is going to be a challenging feat, according to Nysse and Hanis.
Existing hotels have seen better days in Milwaukee. Reports from CoStar show that occupancy in the downtown market has still not returned to pre-pandemic levels, with average occupancy in 2023 at 58% compared to 71% in 2019, though revenue has increased since 2019, largely thanks to higher room rates.
While tourism has come back strong since the pandemic, and group business – the market most closely associated with conventions – has also made noticeable strides, the absence of business travelers to fill hotels during the week and colder weather months has kept hotel occupancy suppressed.
Meanwhile, nearly 1,000 hotel rooms have been added to the downtown Milwaukee area since the beginning of 2019 – including the 132-room Cambria in 2019, 116-room Holiday Inn Express in 2020 and 207-room Trade hotel in 2023 – which has diluted some of the demand.
Large convention hotels are costly to build: take, for instance, the 800-room Signia by Hilton under construction in Indianapolis that’s poised to cost about $510 million. Thus, convincing a developer to make such a large investment in a market where occupancy numbers are still floundering is a tricky task.
Developers might consider such an undertaking if offered incentives from local government, such as tax incremental financing, but Milwaukee is unlikely to do that due to the influence from The Marcus Corp., which is headquartered in the city and owns and operates the Hilton Milwaukee City Center, The Pfister and the Saint Kate, Hanis said.
“They want to protect their interests in the downtown market,” he said.
Marcus Corp. declined to comment on this matter.
“Larger hotels have more restaurants, more meeting space, more parking, and those hotels in tertiary markets usually have some level of incentive from the city,” Nysse said. “In absence of that, we just won’t have large hotels here.”
‘The business is here’
Thanks to the expansion, the Baird Center is projected to increase its business by 30% to 50% within the next few years, according to Brooks.
So far, the Baird Center is on track to have 142 events in 2024, with more events holding dates, which is a 29% increase from the center’s record year in 2019 with 110 events.
Most notably is the Republican National Convention this summer, which will use Fiserv Forum as its main venue, but will use the Baird Center – and the Panther Arena – as designated media space and give WCD the chance to show the expansion off to tens of thousands of visitors and viewers around the world.
Other 2024 events include the Wisconsin Comic Convention in early November, with 30,000 expected attendees, and Trainfest later that month, with 20,000 expected attendees.
Through 2025, there are 211 events booked, also with more events holding dates, including the USA Fencing National Championship, which is expected to generate 13,000 hotel room nights and $10.7 million in economic impact, according to Visit Milwaukee.
In 2026, Expo! Expo!, an event for exhibition and event planners, will be held in Milwaukee for the first time. The event requires 300,000 square feet of exhibit space, which is something the Baird Center didn’t have before. Visit Milwaukee has been pursuing Expo! Expo! since 2021.
“We’ve been selling this expansion since before it broke ground,” Williams-Smith said.
Brooks and Williams-Smith both said they think Milwaukee would benefit from a third convention headquarters hotel, but the expanded convention space needed to come first to gain developer and investor confidence in a project like that.
“We’ve been able to get traction and get big events without the additional hotel package,” Brooks said. “The business is here, the business is coming.”
