Is Cobo Center Big Enough?

The bright spotlight at Cobo Center this week is shining on the glittering new cars.  But when the show leaves town the harsh spotlight will return, as the region wrestles with an old question:  Is Cobo big enough to handle the premier auto show in the world?

Thom Connors is the new General Manager of Cobo.  His answer is, “Sure”

He took us on a tour this week of the aging 2 ½ million square foot convention center, proudly pointing to its most recent round of improvements – like Hitsville Café which brings a little more ‘Detroit’ into Cobo with its music theme.

Cobo was built in the late 50’s when Detroit was booming.  It quickly found itself answering the same question we’re asking today – is it big enough?  In 1985, Action News reported the answers were the same.  A local newspaper conducted a survey and most people said they did not want Cobo to be expanded.

Within a few months of that report upgrades did begin and we ended up pretty much with the Cobo Hall we’re arguing over today.  Thom Connors points proudly to a unique feature he believes is – literally- Cobo’s strength.  He says, “If you look up you’ll see one of the strengths of Cobo Center.  It’s the grid, the steel grid hanging from the roof.  There’s no other convention center with this ceiling.  When you see the display, it looks like this is built from the ground up.  But actually most of it is hanging from the ceiling.”

Cobo, he says, makes up in strength for what it might lack in size, “There are bigger convention centers out there, but some of those are struggling to fill the excess space they’ve built over the last 5 years or so.”

Connors says one of the problems with Cobo isn’t Cobo’s problem at all.  It’s Detroit’s, but it is getting better, “I think as the downtown grows and improves that will help us.  You’ve seen the Campus Marius development and the Book Cadillac and the things that are happening all help us sell Detroit.”

So while the Cobo authority wrestles with the question of whether it ought to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on new upgrades for the future, Connors is confident Cobo is on the right track.

In September, 2009 operational control of Cobo transferred to the Detroit Regional Convention Facility Authority under a collaborative agreement by the Michigan State Legislature, the City of Detroit, and Wayne, Oakland and Macomb Counties.

Channel 7′s Stephen Clark talked with Larry Alexander, Chair of the Authority about the future of Cobo…