Commitment to the environment, hotel/airport proximity and the nature of a South Florida beach destination attract a medical meeting to Fort Lauderdale.

WHEN THE GREATER FORT LAUDERDALE/BROWARD COUNTY CONVENTION CENTER OFFICIALLY RECEIVES ITS LEADERSHIP IN ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN (LEED) CERTIFICATION at the beginning of 2012, it will represent more than just the completion of the yearlong accreditation process. This achievement will represent the culmination of something that goes back two decades, when the center first opened its doors.

And, in a way, the same can be said for what will happen when the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM) convenes its 29th annual meeting at the convention center in 2013—the result of a process that goes back over the 20-year professional career of the meeting’s principal planner, Darlene Somers, CMP, senior meetings manager for the AAPM and a long-time member of the meetings management team for the Chicago-based Association Management Center (AMC), an independent planning company that handles AAPM’s annual meetings.

“For us, the LEED certification is just the icing on the cake, because I’ve become very familiar with the Fort Lauderdale convention center over the years, and I know that it has had a strong, green meetings program going for years now,” Somers said. “And essentially, the LEED certification is not the lynchpin factor in the decision to take the annual meeting to Fort Lauderdale; it’s one of a number of factors that collectively lead us to decide that this convention center is the right place for our group.”

Somers says that, to her, the bigger significance of the convention center’s upcoming LEED certification is not just its commitment to green meetings, but also its commitment to go the extra mile and pursue the myriad details necessary to offer a cutting-edge facility in which her event can be a success.

Ultimately, the decision to take the AAPM meeting to Fort Lauderdale is based on the destination’s track record and Somers’ previous experiences with the city’s convention center.

“We are all very busy and we are blessed with lots of choices of destinations, so when it comes right down to it, I want to go somewhere where I know the outcome is going to be positive,” she said. “And my previous experience with another group whose meeting we conducted there in 2008 showed me that this would be a place where the AAPM meeting could have success.”

The 2008 event, the annual meeting of the National Association of Neonatal Nurses, has a similar footprint and requirements to the upcoming AAPM meeting. The nurses group had about 1,100 attendees and a trade show component that required about 50,000 square feet of exhibit space inside the convention center. The AAPM meeting will bring about 1,000 attendees (not including exhibitors) and require about 70,000 square feet of exhibit space.

One of the key factors that makes the Fort Lauderdale center a fit for both groups, Somers says, is the size and nature of the building itself.

“For one thing, the ambience of this building just makes our attendees feel good as they are walking around in it—lots of glass, lots of blue skies and palm trees and water to look at outside,” she said. “And the size of the facility (600,000 square feet) is just right for the size of our group. We won’t get swallowed up inside of it. We know we will be their center of attention, and that’s very important to me as the planner, because in this business you get one shot to give your group a positive experience—you don’t get a do-over on your group’s biggest annual event.”

And her experience with the support staff at the convention center shows her it is ready for any contingency.

“Something unexpected is always going to happen when you have a big, complex event to manage,” Somers said. “And what I like about the staff there is that they are always smiling at me, no matter what I have to ask them to do on short notice.”

Among the other factors Somers likes about the center, in addition to its green practices, are the surrounding hotel configuration, the proximity to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and the very nature of Fort Lauderdale itself as a South Florida beach destination.

She says that just as was the case with her 2008 event in Fort Lauderdale, the 2013 AAPM annual meeting will use the 589-room Hilton Fort Lauderdale Marina hotel (across the street from the center), which has 21,000 square feet of in-house conference space, as its headquarters, and supplement the group’s room requirement with other nearby hotels. The Hyatt Regency Pier 66, with 384 guest rooms and 40,000 square feet of function space, is just across a bridge from the convention center and within easy walking distance. Within two miles are 3,500 upscale hotel rooms, including oceanfront properties like the 650-room Marriott Harbor Beach Resort & Spa. About 30 hotels in metro Fort Lauderdale are certified by the Florida Green Lodging program and in total, greater Fort Lauderdale offers 33,000 guest rooms.

Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport is less than five miles and no more than a 10-minute drive from the convention center, as are both the city’s beachfront hotel district and its major shopping, dining and entertainment district, Las Olas Boulevard.

In truth, Somers says, factors like ease of getting to the destination and the convention center’s proximity to amenities such as beachfront restaurants probably have more prominence on the “radar screen” of the average convention attendee than the green meetings quotient of the center itself, but that does not diminish the importance to the big picture of a facility’s dedication to environmental responsibility.

“For one thing, meeting green is just the right thing to do,” she said. “And I think that even with groups for which meeting green is not necessarily a policy requirement—all things being equal in terms of the other factors a facility offers, you are going to choose a green facility over one that isn’t. Pursuing LEED certification demonstrates a facility’s attention to detail in a detail-oriented industry, because it is no small undertaking to qualify for LEED certification.”

Mark Gatley, regional general manager of SMG, the company that manages Greater Fort Lauderdale/Broward County Convention Center, says that qualifying for certification by the LEED program is an undertaking that dates to the opening of the convention center in 1991. 

The center was built to high environmental standards at the time that it opened and then upgraded structurally during at expansion and renovation at the mid-point of the center’s 20-year existence that more than doubled its size, from 270,000 square feet to 600,000 square feet.

But major steps have been taken recently to bring the center up to its goal of LEED certification. One huge step has been the recent change of trees, shrubs, grass and other landscaping on the convention center campus to a less water-consumptive variety than it had before, plus the installation of a drip-irrigation system, cutting the center’s water consumption from 10 million gallons a year to less than 5 million.

Also installed recently at the center is an organic waste decomposition system that converts kitchen waste into wastewater similar to what goes through a typical household kitchen sink. That wastewater is then processed through a water treatment system to become potable water. Also involved in the upgrade to LEED standards were typical convention center energy consumption management hardware installations including lighting, cooling, heating and indoor water consumption systems designed for maximum efficiency. Additionally, SAVOR, the center’s food and beverage management company, has focused on food preparation methods involving low-energy consumption cooking, plus the use of local ingredients to reduce the carbon footprint of food transportation to the center. 

And the center is actively involved in food-bank programs for leftover food. Beyond that, the Fort Lauderdale CVB is involved in various, major green-meeting initiatives, including Plan.It Green, an environmental initiative in which meeting attendees can take part in local tree plantings. There are also carbon-offset options to offset transportation fuel consumption.

“It is definitely no small undertaking,” Gatley said in an interview at the recent 20th anniversary celebration at the center. “But we think it is the responsible thing to do and a strategic move that will position us among a small number of LEED-certified convention centers in the country.” (The Greater Fort Lauderdale/Broward County Convention Center certification will make 18 such centers in the U.S.)

A local meeting planner who has been an active user of the convention center for her events over the years, Mona Meretsky, CSEP, president of Fort Lauderdale-based COMCOR Event and Meeting Production Inc., says that while the LEED certification will be a huge step in making the center attractive to more meeting groups, the final piece of the puzzle will be the construction of an onsite convention headquarters hotel.

“This is something we sorely need, and something to which no small amount of effort has been put into over the years by the CVB and by community officials,” she said. “But for various reasons, including economic conditions, no onsite convention hotel has ever come through for us.”

Meretsky says that what local planners, and obviously local tourism officials, would like to see is an onsite, 1,000-guest-room hotel, with plenty of conference space of its own to supplement the space in the convention center.

“We are in competition with convention centers around the country that have big, attached convention hotels, and until we have that as well, the final piece of the puzzle won’t be in place,” she said. One+

TAGS: csr , Fort Lauderdale , green , One+ December 2011