The Boston Convention & Exhibition Center
in December signed a noncompete agreement with the smaller World
Trade Center next door, agreeing that the BCEC would not take
business from the WTC. If a group that had hitherto met at the WTC
wanted to move to the newer, larger facility, the WTC would be
given six months to negotiate to try to keep the business, assuming
the issue pertained to service and not space. Failing that, the
BCEC would pay the WTC for the business.
According to James Rooney, executive director of the
Boston-based Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, the group
that sells and operates the BCEC, this agreement was mandated at
the center’s legislative birth in 1997 so that its new 516,000
square feet of exhibit space wouldn’t force the two private
convention centers in town out of business. The other private
center, the Bayside Expo Center, has no signed agreement but has a
similar understanding with the BCEC. This type of noncompete
agreement appears to be unique to Boston.
“The BCEC is a publicly funded venture designed to bring new
business to Boston,” said Jim Carmody, vice president and general
manager of the Seaport Hotel and World Trade Center. “They wanted
to make sure that the BCEC was focused on bringing in new business,
not cannibalizing existing business.”
“It does make it harder to fill the hall,” noted Steve Adams,
president of the Boston-based Pioneer Institute, a market-oriented
think tank that has been critical of the economic justification for
the BCEC (the MCCA’s Rooney declined to comment on this aspect of
the pact), “but it’s much more supportive for local industry.
Without this agreement, the Bayside Expo Center would close.”