By Angela Hatton
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-896490.mp3
Paducah, KY – Each year, during the American Quilters Society Show and Contest, officials estimate the size of Paducah doubles. More than 30,000 avid quilters descend on the city and surrounding region. Since the permanent closure of the Executive Inn, Paducah officials have worked to provide the AQS with enough space to hold their show. A temporary air dome pavilion now stands nearby the Julian Carroll Convention Center and the Paducah Expo Center. The pavilion represents a $1.7 million investment in the quilt show. As Angela Hatton reports, officials hope for a significant economic return on that investment.
To prevent the white vinyl air dome pavilion from depressurizing, you have to go in through an airlock.
The pavilion is erected over a concrete slab, and entering it feels like walking into an airplane hangar. Paducah Parks Director Mark Thompson gives the tour.
"We've got thirty-eight thousand square feet. We're a hundred and forty across and two hundred seventy down. You have a large skylight area in there which actually helps us not have to use electricity."
Thompson says along with some of the AQS's special quilt displays, over 80 vendors will fill the space. That's a quarter of the total expected vendors. Local business owners have a nickname for the quilt show, Christmas in April, because the attendees pump so much money into the local economy. Paducah Convention and Visitor's Bureau Marketing Director Rosemarie Steele says quilters represent a $20 million impact. Steele says the Visitor's Bureau invests a lot of money catering to these big spenders. Their monthly events brochure, for example, focuses almost entirely on the quilt show.
"Not only do we provide a lot of printed and internet promotional materials, but the CVB also participates with getting the shuttle system going through the community."
Within the city, the Visitor's Bureau provides a shuttle service to bus quilters between their hotels and event locations. Furthermore, Steele says this is the only time of year the CVB takes on a regional focus.
"We check the accommodations from a seventy mile radius. So, we're filling hotel rooms not just within Paducah and McCracken County. It goes much broader than that."
Convention Center Corporation Board Chair Jim Sigler says, yes, the quilt show is a marquee event, but he's more focused on the long term.
"The value of it is not just the revenue it generates for usage of our facility and so forth and so on, but it also gives us the ability to go out across the country and be able to say that while Paducah is not a large metropolitan area, we do have the facilities and the capability to host a show of this significance."
Sigler says ideally, Paducah would host three or four large conventions a year.
"Not just Christmas in April, but Christmas in June and Christmas in July for the folks who very much depend on them."
There is one hitch. The CCC would like the pavilion to be a part of that goal, but legally, they have no control over it.
"The Convention Center Corporation doesn't own the land the pavilion sits on; it doesn't own the pavilion at all; it has no rights or obligations with respect to the pavilion except as to the AQS show."
Sigler says the CCC and the city plan to sit down after the quilt show and work out how they're going to handle a partnership involving the giant air dome. Sigler is also waiting to find out how much the city and county appropriate the CCC in their budgets.
"Our projected expenses are in the five hundred fifty to six hundred thousand dollar range."
They've asked for a quarter million dollars split evenly between Paducah and McCracken County to cover what doesn't come in through transient room taxes and events like the quilt show.
"And they were very receptive to that, and all indications are that there will be some level of appropriation made. Exact dollar figures have not been committed to at this point."
Demolition preparation for the Executive Inn is underway now. Officials plan to raze the building by the end of the year. So far, no hotel developers have expressed interest in buying the property, but Paducah's main event is secure for the time being. Paducah officials and quilt show organizers have signed a contract through 2014.