The MGM Grand is spending $130 million to expand its convention center

I just returned from Vegas and noticed the construction going on behind the MGM. What is being built there?

MGM Resorts is expanding its convention space by a whopping 250,000 square feet, to the tune of $130 million. The addition, when completed late next year, will bring the MGM Grand Convention Center to 850,000 square feet, second largest convention facility in the MGM Resorts hotel portfolio; Mandalay Bay has 1.7 million square feet, the second largest convention center in Las Vegas behind the Las Vegas Convention Center.

The number of convention attendees coming to Las Vegas has risen 41% in the past seven years, breaking a record at 6.3 million in 2016. (By comparison, the number of recreational visitors grew 15% over the same period.)

MGM has invested $350 million over the past four years to expand its Strip meeting and convention areas by 25%; a 200,000-square-foot expansion of Aria's meeting space will be completed in February 2018.

The MGM Grand expansion will include a 49,000-square-foot ballroom, almost as big as size of a football field (which is 57,600 square feet), a 32,000-square-foot ballroom, and three smaller ballrooms.

Your faithful QoD correspondent would love to tell you more, but I'm rushing out to beat the hordes who are rushing in even as I type. Drive safely tonight, everyone; the life you save might be my own!

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That Don Guy Dec-31-2017

Let the rumors begin

...that GenCon, having "outgrown" Indianapolis, is going to move to Vegas any time soon.
Just a few problems with that:
1.  GenCon has a contract with the Indiana Convention Center through something like 2021.
2.  Most gaming conventions have figured out that most gamers live out east, so a western convention won't do as well (it has been tried - "GenCon West" failed somewhat miserably).
3. GenCon likes to promote itself as "family-friendly," which is not particularly easy to do on the Strip.

Question of the Day - 31 December 2017

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