It just keeps growing and growing

So, you get these bodybuilders who go to the gym and wind up with muscles popping out all over but, no matter how huge they get, there they are, still at the gym, still increasing in size.

If ever there were a bodybuilder's architectural equivalent, it would be the Salt Palace Convention Center.

Ever since the modern Salt Palace was built on Salt Lake's West Temple street in the 1960s (replacing the original Salt Palace on 900 South that burned in 1910), it has made like Schwarzenegger, expanding convention space here, popping out a wing there, enlarging a ballroom over there. In four decades it has undergone five expansions or reconstructions, with more on the way.

It also has reinvented itself every so often from a center for entertainment to basketball arena to trade show mecca, switching between tan brick, clear glass, shiny steel and white stone.

"It's almost a history" of the community, Gov. Olene Walker said. "It's been a benchmark of our need to grow."

The Salt Palace has in fact been a bellwether of Utah's growth patterns — particularly the state's accelerated growth during the past few decades.

Not only that, it has reflected Utah's changing nature from quiet community to national and international player.

Dianne Binger, president of the Salt Lake Convention & Visitors Bureau, said outsiders looking to do business here have noticed. Meeting planners who haven't been to Utah before are now coming on the basis of, as she puts it, "If you can hold the Olympics, I bet you can host my convention," and meeting planners who have been to the state before are seeing changes.

"They come in here and say, 'Whoa — this is a whole different destination,' " Binger said.

The Salt Palace expansions have been accompanied by expansions and upgrades of hotel space, taxi service, restaurants and other corollary service industries, which have attracted more and bigger conventions and trade shows.

That's a pattern local convention types hope will continue with the latest planned expansion, which will take the Salt Palace from 370,000 square feet to 585,000 square feet, an almost 60 percent increase overall.

"It moves us into the next tier," Salt Lake County Mayor Nancy Workman said. "It's going to be exciting to see who talks to us that hasn't talked to us before."

There's more behind Salt Palace expansions than the state's evolution, however. Convention facilities all over the country have been exploding in size over the past several years, all of them trying to retain and attract ever-larger trade conventions.