IAVM member real estate consulting firms are located throughout the US. Such firms specialize in convention centers, arenas, stadiums, hotels and fairgrounds, among other real estate land uses. Often, real estate consultants are seen as “feasibility consultants” looking at a new facility or an expanded or replaced facility.
If customers/clients are smart, they can use economic consultants in so many other ways. A good consultant has literally seen thousands of projects that can inform the support they can provide. For example, the Erie County Convention Center Authority has commissioned studies for:
- Upgrade plan for the City’s arena, ball park and performing arts center, with full demand, financial projections, and economic impact analysis for each use
- Strategy development for a vitalized district around these venues, making a policy decision to remove a parking deck and create an event lawn between the three facilities, replacing parking elsewhere
- Policy decision between self-developing or attracting a developer for a 203-room Sheraton hotel
- Expert testimony defending the authority in justifying the hotel, while addressing concerns of other hotels
- Projecting tax revenue for various projects funded by the authority
- Recruiting management for the 203-room Sheraton hotel
- Assisting in analyzing a 16-acre parcel owned by the authority, for hotel, office, residential, retail and cultural uses, and helping issue a developer RFP for this parcel
- Holding countless workshops with the Board, helping them develop the business case for implementing the above improvements, to the City, County and State
- Helping the CVB adjust their marketing approach to reflect the new convention center
- Preparing updates to projections prepared 12 years earlier, to carry the organization through the next 10 years of operation.
Your consultant can also identify operation improvements, help analyze economic and fiscal impacts, help argue the case, base on return on investments, help hire architects, contracts and other service providers, and many other services. Such consultants are seasoned industry professionals, with the sole intent of making client organizations better. Their services are actually very inexpensive compared to the size of investments being made and are often earned many fold over by the savings brought forth by the consultant.
Charles Johnson is the President of Johnson Consulting and a Managing Director of World Trade Center Chicago
