Conference center in Davis a success

LAYTON — The Davis Conference Center, open just 10 weeks, is booking events well ahead of projections and will need to be expanded to accommodate larger trade shows, officials said.

Scott F. Lunt, general manager, said the county-owned conference center has 109 events — mostly Christmas parties — booked for December. And bookings for the rest of the year are running about 25 percent ahead of projections. The center is expected to do close to $1.8 million in business in its first year, he said.

The $11 million center, paid for with revenues from the county's tourism tax, is drawing business at a rate high enough to warrant the building of an exhibit hall next to it sometime in the future. Although original plans for the conference center show an exhibit building on the northwest corner of the project, the county wants to see the center established before committing to construct another building, County Commission Chairman Dannie McConkie said.

Lunt said at one point, the county and property manager Western States Lodging looked at a semi-permanent tent to handle larger trade shows. But they decided the costs of maintaining, heating and cooling it were too high.

The largest exhibit hall that could be built would be 50,000 square feet, which is about the right size probably five years from now, McConkie said.

"We want to get the conference center up and running smoothly before we commit to anything else," he said. "We are not going to do something we can't pay for and can't justify."

Next June, the county and the managers will better know what to expect in the future. At that point, McConkie said, the commissioners will sit down with Western States and ask for a long-range plan that could include an exhibit hall.

Lunt would like an exhibit building so the center can attract larger conventions, some of which have trade shows accompanying them. Western States, which has a five-year contract to run the conference center, expects to operate at a loss the first two years and earn a profit in the third, Lunt said. However, if the initial success holds up, the center could be profitable sooner.

The 43,000-square-foot conference center is doing what the county hoped it would — bringing people into Davis County to spend money, McConkie said.

"It's bringing people in from outside the county and outside the state," he said.

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