I bet you don't even know what a Corporate (only) Convention is...let alone how large or small one can be...
Well. Now maybe some of the wording has changed over the years
You can have a corporate gathering that is just the employees of the company, much like the Walmart get-together, which KC just lost.
You can also have a corporate gathering that includes employees of many companies but are in a specialized field, much like the Risk and Insurance Management Society.
You can have a professional gathering, which includes members of a group, much like the American Academy of Family Physicians.
There are some small corporate gatherings that can be contained within a hotel complex, much like the facilities at Crown Center or downtown at the Marriott.
And their are many other catagories of events that can be listed.
With regards to square footage usage it is hard to say how the size of the group relates to the footage being used.
How much of the area is used for exhibits, in other words are there lots of exhibits, are the exhibits large, small, or what. How much of the area is used for general sessions, in other words how many people will be seated, what size of stage, etc. Will any of the area be used for catered functions, breakfast, lunch, awards dinner, and so on. Does the event open with one general session and then the area converted to meal functions or vice-versa.
In other words you can't say that a group of 2,000 will use this amount of square footage and a group of 6,000 will use that amount of square footage.
To go exclusively after only one segment of the convention industry, such as your "Large Corporate Conventions" would be suicide. And, unless things have changed over the years, the CVB, the CC marketing staff, and even the local hotels pursue any type of event that is out there. It is very common within the convention industry to know what conventions are out there, what size they are, where are they going, and so on.
So I will throw it back at you, kull, define what is meant by "Large, corporate convention"?
I don't see how building a 1000 room convention hotel is taking two steps backward
I did not say that, by itself, building a convention hotel is two steps back. But without adding more space to the Convention Center we really haven't improved our situation that much compared to other cities. It has been 20 years since we started to add exhibit space to our facilities. During that time other cities have added space to their facilities and so now we are behind the pack with regards to floor space. Even now other cities are currently adding floor space or are studying the issue.
So, yes, a hotel helps but just a hotel would not have kept Walmart here, Skills here, nor brought back FFA. These are events that people complain about losing. A lack of space also prevents other large conventions from coming here. A lack of space also prevents the facility from hosting two medium sized conventions at the same time, or because of conflicting move-in and move-out dates prevents one event from closely following another.