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City Council to Vote on Convention Center Plan: $10.7 Million Proposal to Help Accommodate Traffic From Light Rail

Posted on: Monday, 13 February 2006, 12:00 CST

By Richard Rubin, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.

Feb. 13--The City Council is set to vote tonight on $10.7 million worth of improvements to the Charlotte Convention Center -- and that still might not be enough to allow convention-goers and light-rail trains to move effectively through the building.

The contract doesn't include the long-discussed plans for escalators that would take people beneath or over the tracks, which thus far have only carried trolleys.

Instead, most of the changes would happen in the convention center's service corridor, where workers move food, tables and chairs from one side of the building to the other. Now, they can walk across the tracks.

But light-rail trains will run more frequently than trolleys, and officials worry that leaving that passageway open would be unsafe. Tonight's contract calls for adding two elevators, so workers would go up on one side of the tracks and descend on the other.

The train-through-a-building idea has been fraught with trouble for years. The convention center was built in the mid-1990s on the site of an old rail yard, straddling an existing but unused track. The building was constructed to allow trains to move through it, which was preferable to building the rail line higher or the putting convention center lower, city engineer Jim Schumacher said.

But it wasn't completely ready for rail. Several years ago, the city spent about $15 million preparing for trolley service, Schumacher said. Now, the trolley has stopped during light-rail construction, and the city is spending even more money to limit the disruptions the trains will cause.

Tonight's contract, which is likely to be approved, doesn't include millions of dollars already spent in engineering and design costs.

Republican council member Andy Dulin said he plans to ask some hard questions about the project -- particularly the original idea of running a train through the building.

"That's the kind of thing that irritates citizens like me enough to go run for office," he said. "That's just ridiculous, the kind of money they're wasting."

Even if the council approves the contract tonight, the spending isn't done, either. The next big decision will come later this year, after NASCAR decides whether to put its hall of fame in Charlotte.

If that project happens, it would include a new ballroom, connected to the convention center by walkways across Brevard Street. The existing ballroom could be carved up into meeting space, and the meeting space on the other side of the building would be used less often.

In that case, "crossing the corridor could potentially be less of an issue," said Tim Newman, CEO of the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority, which runs the center.

But if NASCAR goes elsewhere, convention center officials have long preferred a set of escalators that would take people over the tracks. Last year, the city estimated that the so-called "up-and-over" plan would cost $16.5 million, including the work in the service corridor.

But construction prices have soared since then. Now, Schumacher said, he has no updated cost estimates.

Richard Rubin: (704) 358-5832

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.

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Source: The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.)

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