Convene
Key criteria when selecting new venue locations
CMW ASKS CONVENE’ S BRIAN HOLLAND, SENIOR VICE-PRESIDENT OF GLOBAL REAL ESTATE, ABOUT KEY FACTORS INFLUENCING NEW VENUE DESTINATION CHOICE
W hat are the key factors
Convene considers when identifying a new location for a venue? There are three key areas: market demand, standard venue requirement and economic viability.
Market demand is the first; if we don’ t have conviction in the region, we won’ t consider adding a venue. We’ ve developed our own proprietary analysis to measure potential demand, leveraging multiple data sources, but always triangulate back to existing client demand. If client requests for a venue in a specific city or neighbourhood are consistently relayed back to us, we’ ll start looking. For years, clients were asking us to expand into San Francisco and when we finally opened Convene 100 Stockton it quickly became one of our top-performing venues.
We then have very particular spatial requirements. Beyond being in a desirable area, we have a checklist for the buildings we consider. On average, there are more than a dozen factors we take into consideration, including total square footage, ceiling heights, location of support columns, elevator capacity, points of egress, freight loading and light and power.
Once we’ ve met the first two criteria, the third area we evaluate is the most crucial and complex: the economic viability of the location. We run multiple financial models to ensure it will be successful.
Please elaborate on why core city locations are prioritised in your selection process? The reason Convene venues are in city centres is for the most obvious reason: it’ s where people want to be. Event planners and attendees alike are looking for somewhere that is easily accessible with proximity to public transport, hotels, restaurants, and activities.
A dozen of Convene’ s 15 New York City locations are in Midtown, our portfolio’ s top-performing region – the area is a global destination that has it all.
In recent years, Convene has also seen success in fully-integrated
Above: Brian Holland
“ We have a checklist for the buildings we consider. On average, there are more than a dozen factors.”
Below: Convene 360 Madison Avenue, NYC
Class A + assets like Willis Tower in Chicago and 22 Bishopsgate in London. The ability to offer one-of-a-kind experiences inbuilding like Skydeck Chicago or fine dining at the highest restaurant in London, Gordon Ramsay’ s Lucky Cat, allows our clients to maximise their event offering while minimising the typical drop-off you might see when moving locations.
Could you share an example of a location that perfectly met your criteria? Typically, Convene likes to be in trophy commercial office buildings, those rated Class A or A +. But the two most ideal real estate from an end-user perspective are in retail spaces: Convene Brookfield Place, 225 Liberty in Downtown Manhattan and Convene 100 Stockton in San Francisco’ s Union Square.
Convene Brookfield Place, 225 Liberty, for example, is in a mall with two office towers above it. Guests can arrive via the taxi drop-off on Liberty Street or the subway located in the basement of the building. There is groundlevel load-in access. This location also sees a high level of utilisation from its neighbours, the building’ s office tenants.
We’ re also getting tapped more and more to repurpose pre-existing conferencing centres. Post-Covid some organisations have since downsized their office footprint, leaving behind the right venue infrastructure for an operator like Convene. At 30 Hudson Yards, we’ re taking the bones of a previous occupier’ s conferencing centre to create an incredible new location for our clients while monetising previously underutilised real estate. n
n For more from Convene and its‘ Design Thinking’ approach, check out the full article online at www. c-mw. net
ISSUE 136 / CONFERENCE & MEETINGS WORLD / 53