March 28, 2026Opened: 2004. Exhibit space: 516,000 sq ft contiguous. Walk Score: 62.
What happens when you build big on empty land.
Underutilized industrial piers and derelict waterfront. The state used eminent domain to assemble a 60-acre site. A lost 1999 plan by Cooper Robertson proposed smaller blocks, a network of parks, and “active street fronts” — killed by political opposition and post-Big Dig budget constraints.
March 28, 2026Opened: 1986 ($1.5B expansion completed 2021). Exhibit space: 675,000+ sq ft. Walk Score: 99.
A 29-year dead zone that took $30 billion to fix.
Penn Central rail yards. The far-west location on 11th Avenue was chosen in 1978 as the cheaper alternative. Designed by I.M. Pei partner James Ingo Freed.
When Javits opened, the nearest subway was half a mile away. Residents described it as “a big, black hulking building” that cut off waterfront access. Long-time Chelsea resident Edward Kirkland: “People looked at it with a sense of isolation.”
March 28, 2026East Building: 1987 (Expo 86 Canada Pavilion). West Building: 2009 ($883M CAD). Combined exhibit space: 466,500 sq ft. Walk Score: 96. Transit Score: 100.
The convention center as civic infrastructure. Designed by LMN Architects — a Seattle firm.
Industrial waterfront — shipyards, lumber mills, shipping piers (from 1911), WWII munitions factories, Boeing seaplane factory (1929). CPR lands, redeveloped 1994–2010.
The West Building isn’t just a convention center. It’s a piece of waterfront civic infrastructure:
March 28, 2026Opened: 2013. Exhibit space: 353,000 sq ft. Walk Score: 83–86.
The convention center that works — built on a community that was erased.
Black Bottom — Nashville’s first African American business and residential district. Center of Black business life by 1900. Destroyed by urban renewal and highway construction; gone by 1960. 200,000+ cubic yards excavated.
Convention centers have a history of being built on cleared communities. Nashville is one of the most documented cases.
March 28, 2026Old Convention Center: Opened 1982, closed 2003, demolished December 18, 2004. 800,000 sq ft. Replacement: CityCenterDC. Opened 2015. 2.5 million sq ft mixed-use. Foster + Partners.
The most radical version of the experiment: demolish a convention center in the urban core and replace it with mixed-use development.
Opened December 10, 1982 at 909 H Street NW. 10.2-acre superblock bounded by New York Avenue, 11th, H, and 9th Streets. Fourth-largest convention center in the US at opening.
March 28, 2026Opened: 1996. Exhibit space: 1,242,000+ sq ft (16 halls). Distance from CBD: ~8–10 miles from Tokyo Station (~35–40 min by train).
The deliberate isolation model.
Reclaimed land from Tokyo Bay. Some artificial islands date to 1853 (defensive gun batteries against Commodore Perry). Modern reclamation in the 1970s–80s. The site was part of the failed “Teleport Town” development — a bubble-era vision for a new business district on the bay that collapsed when Japan’s stock market crashed (1990–92).