Ask any restaurant owner, hotel manager, or downtown retailer what they need more of, and the answer is almost always the same: consistent, reliable customers. Not just on weekends. Not just during the holiday shopping season. Year-round, across every season, from a diverse mix of visitors with money to spend and time to explore.
That's exactly what a modern Convention and Events Center delivers — not as a one-time event, but as a steady source of economic activity, nearly every day of the year, that sends thousands of visitors out the door and into Springfield's streets, shops, and restaurants.
The Anatomy of a Convention Day
Consider what would happen when Springfield's convention center hosts a three-day regional trade association conference. Five hundred attendees arrive from across the country. They need hotel rooms — according to Hunden Partners, the new facility is projected to generate approximately 80,000 room nights annually across all projected events combined. They need breakfast before the first session. They need lunch between panels. They need dinner reservations, a bar to decompress at, and entertainment options for their free evenings. They visit a local coffee shop before the morning keynote. They pop into a boutique on their lunch break. They buy souvenirs to bring home.
This isn't a hypothetical. Hunden Partners projects that Springfield's new facility will host approximately 179,500 attendees across 164 events each year, generating an estimated $45 million in annual visitor spending. That money flows directly through local businesses — and it stays in Springfield.
Hotels: The First Line of Impact
Hotels are perhaps the most immediately obvious beneficiary. With roughly 80,000 projected hotel room nights annually, Springfield's lodging properties — already part of the ecosystem that funds this very project through the tourism tax — would see sustained occupancy at levels difficult to achieve without a major convention center nearby.
Higher occupancy means more revenue, more staff hours, and more investment back into facilities and service quality. It also makes Springfield more attractive to hotel developers considering new properties downtown — further expanding the city's capacity to host even larger events over time.
Restaurants and Retail: Where Visitors Spend
Food and beverage is one of the top spending categories for convention attendees. A downtown convention center, walkable to Springfield's growing restaurant and entertainment scene, puts local dining establishments in prime position to capture that spending. Whether it's a working lunch at a downtown café, a celebratory dinner at a local steakhouse, or drinks at a rooftop bar after the closing ceremony, convention visitors funnel money into exactly the kinds of businesses that define Springfield's local character.
Retail benefits similarly. Convention attendees are not just in town to attend sessions — they're exploring. They're browsing. They're experiencing Springfield as a destination. Local boutiques, galleries, markets, and specialty shops all stand to benefit from the foot traffic that a major convention center consistently brings throughout the year.
The Multiplier Effect in Action
Here's what economists call the multiplier effect — and here's how it works in Springfield. When outside money comes into Springfield — say, a convention attendee pays for a meal at a local restaurant — that restaurant owner pays wages to their staff, purchases ingredients from local suppliers, and invests back into the business. Those employees then spend their wages at local businesses, and the cycle continues. Every dollar of new visitor spending generates additional economic activity well beyond the original transaction.
This is why the projected $45 million in direct visitor spending adds up to a much bigger boost for Springfield's economy overall — and why it also generates approximately $2.5 million in annual city tax revenue, or roughly $6,800 per day, that supports core services like streets, police, and parks.
Year-Round Stability in a Seasonal Economy
One of the underappreciated aspects of convention business is that it doesn't have a slow season the way traditional tourism does. While tourism often peaks in summer and dips in winter, conventions are booked year-round. Corporate meetings, professional association gatherings, trade shows, sporting events, and community festivals don't cluster in July. They fill calendars in January, March, and October just as readily.
For Springfield businesses accustomed to slower periods, this kind of consistent baseline traffic is transformative. A hotel that might struggle to fill rooms in February suddenly has a regional medical conference filling three floors. A restaurant that's typically half-empty on a Tuesday night in November is serving a full dining room of industry professionals.
What Springfield Is Missing Right Now
The frustrating reality for Springfield businesses today is that the city is already competitive in many respects — strong hotel inventory, great dining, a walkable downtown — but keeps losing event bookings to cities with bigger, more modern facilities. When a regional professional association is deciding between Springfield and a comparable city, what often tips the decision is whether the venue is big enough and flexible enough. The current Expo Center, at roughly 45,000 square feet, simply can't compete.
Every event that goes elsewhere is money that doesn't circulate through Springfield. It's a hotel room that doesn't get booked, a meal that doesn't get ordered, a staff member who doesn't get called in. The Convention and Events Center closes that gap — and Springfield's local business community is better for it every single time an event chooses Springfield over the competition.
This is infrastructure for the whole community. And when local businesses thrive, everyone in Springfield benefits.
Learn more at springfieldmo.org/inform
