The Branson Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce & CVB and Taney County Partnership have hired Matthew Adkins as Vice President/Chief Economic Development Officer. Adkins assumed the role Thursday, January 2, 2025.

Matthew Adkins, a Kentucky native, is an accomplished economic development leader, having led several community and economic development organizations across Kentucky over the last five years. With expertise in business recruitment and retention, workforce development, and public policy, Adkins has secured significant grants, drafted strategic development plans, and fostered collaboration among local, state, and federal partners. This collaborative approach has been instrumental in driving sustainable growth and enhancing the region’s quality of life. Working for and alongside the Branson Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce & CVB and the Taney County Partnership will include opportunities to use a holistic approach to economic development.

Adkins holds a master’s degree in business administration from Northern Kentucky University and in 2023 was awarded Kentucky Association for Economic Development’s Young Professional of the Year for securing over $300 million in capital investment and creating 400+ jobs along the I-71 Corridor.

Sharing his enthusiasm for the position, Adkins stated, “I have always found that Chambers of Commerce provide the tools and resources to touch all aspects of economic development, from entrepreneurship to healthcare, childcare, housing, commercial and retail, education, transportation, and even manufacturing. Having the opportunity to work alongside both of these organizations, I feel that we will continue to be able to push the envelope on innovation and improve the quality of life for the citizens and visitors of this region.”

Stan Field, board chair for the Partnership, stated, “Taney County Partnership was formed to help attract new businesses to our area and assist our existing businesses to grow and prosper. Matt brings experience and great leadership skills to move the Partnership forward.”

Finlandia Hall’s main auditorium offers the original design with advanced technology. Photo: Tuomas Uusheimo

Finlandia Hall will open its doors on Saturday, January 4, following three years of renovation. For the first time, the doors will be open daily to all Helsinki residents and tourists. The renovated Finlandia Hall will offer a wider range of services than before, from a restaurant and wine café to accommodation, exhibition space and a design shop.

One of Finland’s most significant event venues, Finlandia Hall, designed by Alvar Aalto, will open after long anticipation on January 4, 2025. The building has been undergoing renovation since the beginning of 2022. For the first time in its history, the renovated Finlandia Hall will open not only to congress and event visitors but also to all city residents and tourists as a shared, everyday leisure destination and experience venue.

Services and Experiences Make the New Finlandia

Finlandia Events & Meetings: High-quality service and cost-effective beauty
Finlandia Hall has an impressive track record and experience in event organisation, and diverse event services remain at the core of the building’s operations. Finlandia Hall’s annual visitor count has been approximately 200,000, and the goal for 2025 is to double this number.

The state-of-the-art technology and renovated spaces in the renewed Finlandia Hall enable high-quality events, concerts, congresses and meetings–from small to large. The versatile spaces, updated range of services, advanced technology and experienced, professional staff ensure top-level service, care and experience.

Finlandia Bistro: Finnish flavours meet the Mediterranean
Finlandia Hall’s first à la carte restaurant, Finlandia Bistro, is a tribute to Alvar Aalto’s love for Italy. The atmospheric ambiance in Finlandia Bistro is created by Alvar Aalto’s unique architecture and design combined with Finlandia Hall’s original furniture and Finnish art.

Finlandia Cafe & Wine: Above the everyday with a new viewing terrace
Finlandia Hall’s new wine café serves seasonal quality café products with spectacular views. On the terrace, opened to the public for the first time, visitors can stop year-round to admire Helsinki city centre’s most beautiful views over Töölönlahti Bay. The café offers delicious savoury and sweet pastries, hot dishes and salads, as well as carefully selected wines and refreshments.

Finlandia Shop: Hand-picked treasures and unique souvenirs
Adjacent to the café, a design shop specialising in Finnish design will open, offering products from small Finnish design brands, unique Finlandia Collection items, timeless classics, ceramic art pieces from Arabia art department artists, contemporary design utility items, and naturally, Aalto products.

Finlandia Homes: Historically unique accommodation
Finlandia Hall’s new accommodation facilities offer a globally unique opportunity to experience Finnish design and architecture up close, and to stay overnight in a concert and conference venue. These two apartments, originally designed by Alvar Aalto as staff accommodation and now carefully restored, embody functional aesthetics and authentic Finnish home atmosphere. The rooms are now available for booking as accommodation for the first time. The apartments are decorated in respect to Aalto’s style and furnished with Artek classics and the building’s original furniture, making them perfect for admirers of design and cultural heritage.

Finlandia Experience Exhibition: To the roots of the Aaltos
In June 2025, Finlandia Hall will open a permanent exhibition that experientially tells the story of Alvar Aalto’s, Aino Aalto’s and Elissa Aalto’s architectural and creative diversity. The exhibition offers an opportunity to gain deep insight into Alvar Aalto’s legacy and design principles, as well as their influence on modern architecture and Finnish design.

More information about the exhibition will be provided in Spring 2025.

The Board of Directors of the East Montgomery County Improvement District is excited to announce the sale and delivery of just over $159 million in sales tax revenue bonds for the construction of the district’s 210,000 sq. ft. convention center and 813-space attached parking garage at the Valley Ranch Town Center in New Caney, TX.

Designed by Helman Hurley Charvat Peacock/Architects, Inc. (HHCP), the venue will feature a 55,000 sq. ft. ballroom/exhibit hall, nearly 20,000 sq. ft. of meeting space, and approximately 25,000 sq. ft. of pre-function and lobby space and outdoor courtyards. The facility is large enough to hold major corporate events, trade shows, local and regional youth sporting events, consumer shows, galas, wedding receptions, graduations, proms and other private events.

The plans also include space for a future full-service conference hotel to connect to the conference center and parking garage.
The Board selected SpawGlass as the Construction Manager at Risk (CMAR) on the project and local subcontractors whenever possible. Construction on the facility is expected to begin in January.

“We have worked tirelessly with the architects, engineers, research groups, and Valley Ranch developer, Signorelli Company, to ensure the center’s location and nearby future amenities will draw visitors and additional restaurants and retail, a layout that is top notch and implements fantastic ideas from other conference centers, and programming that meets the needs of regional groups seeking space for their events,” stated Frank McCrady, EMCID President and CEO. “So far, the Board has already approved an entertainment project, Lumos Social, that will be located near the convention center, and we are in talks with several higher-end restaurant brands that would not have initially had interest in our area but do now expressly because of proximity to a conference center. Our community will also get the benefit of having those brands to dine from.”

The Board began due diligence in 2021 studying various conference centers and engaging Hunden Strategic Partners for a market analysis and feasibility study. Hunden performed an economic, demographic and tourism analysis, as well as a market analysis for the demand for convention, event, and meeting space. Hunden determined the greater Houston area is lacking multi-use space that can accommodate groups that are unable to host events downtown due to rental rates and hotel prices and that demand is great for flat-floor events and court sports.

Hunden expects the project to generate over the next 30 years nearly $1.73 billion in net new spending within the boundaries of the district, $775 million in net new earnings, and more than 500 direct and indirect full-time equivalent jobs at stabilization. The project should generate about $35.1 million in sales, hotel, and venue taxes to the district.

Dan Graveline, CVE, retired executive director and CEO of the Georgia World Congress Center, Duluth, who had a major impact on the Atlanta skyline and the venue industry, died Dec. 18 at his home in Georgia.

Graveline was the first executive director of the Georgia World Congress Center Authority, serving in that position for 33 years, from 1976 to 2009.

Dan Graveline was GWCCA’s first executive director; a position he held for more than 30 years. (Courtesy of GWCCA)

“Under Dan’s remarkable stewardship, the Georgia World Congress Center transformed from a single building convention center into a world-class campus that brought us the Georgia Dome and Centennial Olympic Park,” said Kevin Duvall, CEO of GWCC today. “His vision and dedication laid the foundation for an era of growth and innovation, elevating Atlanta into one of the nation’s premier destinations and welcoming millions to our city. I had the privilege of working alongside Dan for several years, witnessing firsthand his extraordinary leadership and unwavering commitment to excellence.”

In an interview with Maria Saporta of The Saporta Report when he retired in 2009, Graveline shared that Centennial Park was one of his favorite projects.

“The park to me is one of the most unique and interesting things I’ve ever done,” Graveline told Saporta. “What a great asset that has turned out to be. It doesn’t make a dime. But it has generated billions of dollars of development. It’s become the center of gravity.”

“Every time it tends to get a little monotonous, something new pops up,” Graveline added.

Frank Poe, who officially retires from his post as CEO of GWCC at the end of this month, knew Graveline both as a peer—competing for trade show business—and as a mentor when he moved to Atlanta upon Graveline’s retirement to take his place in April 2010. The Congress Center Authority wisely kept Graveline under contract for a year after his retirement in an advisory role to Poe.

“He introduced me to stakeholders I needed to know,” Poe said. “It was a mentor/mentee relationship. It was a valuable opportunity to share that time.”

Poe had always admired the campus Graveline built in Atlanta. “The Congress Center was the gold standard to the rest of us,” Poe said. “In my perspective, he was the embodiment of a businessman who had a vision of how he saw the campus should develop.”

He had the skill to sell that vision to the public and politicians.

Graveline joined IAVM in 1968. He achieved his CVE in 1978 and served as chair of the Advisory Council – IAVM Foundation from 2006 to 2011.

Dan Graveline, executive director of GWCCA for 33 years, poses with his portrait that was unveiled during GWCC’s kickoff celebration for its upcoming 50th anniversary and will be hung in a special place of honor at GWCC. (Courtesy of GWCCA)

Born on July 1, 1941, in Toronto, Daniel Anthony Graveline Jr. grew up in the Tennessee Valley area. He paid his way through college working on ships in the Merchant Marines on the Great Lakes, becoming the youngest wheelsman by the age of 19.

He graduated from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, where he was a student from 1962 to 1969, working on ships in the summer and taking winter classes when the lakes were frozen over. He also served as a drill sergeant in the Reserves while working toward his bachelor’s degree in business and his master’s in education.

His journey in the hospitality industry began as an assistant director at the Indiana Convention Center, before moving on to the LA Convention Center. He was asked to serve as the first executive director of the future Georgia World Congress Center in July of 1976. Over the next 33 years, he grew a single-building convention center into a sprawling campus, including the Georgia Dome and Centennial Olympic Park, transforming Atlanta into a world-class destination for live events, conventions, and entertainment. He was known for his servant leadership—always putting others before himself—as well as his grace under pressure, managing multiple crises from severe tornado damage at the Georgia Dome to the bombing during the 1996 Olympic Games.

Saporta reported that when making his decision to retire, Graveline said he had to ask himself the question: “If I stay a little longer, could I do one more thing? But there’s no end to that.”

There have been many more things, including a new football stadium built next door and now a master plan for an entertainment district on the GWCC campus, Poe said.

Cliff and Susan Wallace, left, met with Susan and Dan Graveline frequently, including in August of this year. He kept in touch with the industry.

However, Graveline decided that instead of waiting for that next project, whatever it might be, it was a good time to retire. “We did accomplish a few things on my watch,” Graveline told Saporta, adding it had been a satisfying and rewarding career with lots of fun. “It’s not so much what I have done for this place. It’s what this place has done for me.”

It was particularly poignant to Poe when he learned of Graveline’s death because, two months earlier, they had unveiled a portrait of Graveline that will be hung in a special niche at GWCC in the near future. The dedication was during the launch of the 50th-anniversary celebration of the first building on the GWCC campus, the one Graveline built.

“It was a moment in time that we could celebrate him and all the folks that were originally involved in the first facility that was built that launched Atlanta and the state of Georgia into the convention trade show world,” Poe said. “It was a special night. It was one I know he enjoyed and appreciated.”

To his family, he was the Christmas Day chef renowned for his signature biscuits and gravy. He was an avid storyteller, with one-liners that could pack an unexpected punch. He was never without a smile, and his biggest smiles were reserved for his house on Lake Lanier—he loved fishing, being out on the boat, and passing the day by the water.

He is survived by his wife, Susan, with whom he shared 43 beautiful years; his daughter, Alex Graveline Miller, born in 1989; son-in-law Lee Miller; and a future grandson due in March 2025. Survivors also include his sister, Martha Gaut, and her husband Charlie; niece Emily and nephew Michael; brother Jon; brother Thomas and nephew TJ; brother Matt and his wife DeeDee; niece Savannah Huddleston and her husband Nick; brother-in-law Michael Highsmith and his wife Jill; niece Lily and nephew Jackson; sister-in-law Julie Hulslander and nephew Logan; and brother-in-law Steve Jones.