Convention Center

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By Wayne McLeod
100 Million Peso Multi-Use Facility 'Fully Funded' Says Governor

After years of false starts and delays, Jalisco's governor and Puerto Vallarta's mayor announced Tuesday that the planned Convention Center here was now fully funded, and that construction would start in 45 days.

Under a tent erected on the site – located directly across from the Puerto Vallarta International Airport – for the ocassion, Governor Francisco Ramirez Acuña and Mayor Gustavo Gonzalez Villaseñor jointly announced that the long-planned convention center with a capacity of 5,000 people will be completed by January/February 2007 at a cost of 100 million pesos (approx. $9.5 million US). The 5,000 square meter site will also contain a large public park, they said to a group of local officials and press numbering approximately 50 people.

Funds for the convention center will derive from Pemex monies payed out to state treasuries, said Go

Ramirez Acuña, explaining that the national oil company's windfall profits (as a result of international high oil prices) are divided up between states. He also said that though the "first stone" ('primera piedra') was layed 714 days earlier when the project was announced at the then newly-chosen site, private investors had not stepped forward to help fund the project. Now, Acuña said, the state would fully fund the 100 million peso cost.
The Guadalajara-based architectural firm Gomez, Vazquez, Aldana y Asociados, a much experienced large project company, have been chosen to build the multi-use facility, the governor said, adding that Expo

Guadalajara, a company that runs similiar centers in the state capital city, would administer it.
For years here tourism professionals have
been calling for a convention center in the 5-10,000 visitor capicity in order to compete with other destinations that offer multi-use buildings for large-scale conventions.
Several different sites had been considered – just south of the Sheraton Buganvilias Hotel, on the tip of the Marina Vallarta peninsula, and in the ecologoical estuary – but for multiple reasons none were finally green-lighted for the convention center.

The current location borders the estuary – a wildlife reserve – but officials say the center will not interfere with drainage or other environmental concerns.
Clean-up crews have been razing the grounds of the site for months, preparing it for construction, now announced to start in late September, 2006, with completion in early 2007.

* Reporters Miguel Angel Oceaña Reyes and Jaime Castillo Copado contributed to this report.