The nation’s first fully electric conference center opening downtown

Tompkins Weekly | Jaime Coyne Hughes | May 22, 2024

The grand ballroom on the second floor of the Ithaca Downtown Conference Center, located on Green Street. The conference center is slated to open July 1. Photo by Joe Scaglione

With its expanse of dark blue walls and rows upon rows of recessed lighting in white and wood-toned ceilings, one could imagine events of every kind coming to life when entering the 10,600-square-foot ballroom on the second floor of the new Ithaca Downtown Conference Center.

“We have wedding packages available, and we can host birthday parties and social events, so it’s not just meetings and conferences. The first- and second-floor ballrooms can also be broken down into smaller meeting spaces,” said Katherine Taylor, who was hired to the position of general manager (GM) of the Ithaca Downtown Conference Center about three weeks ago. 

“The color scheme is very well thought out,” added Rick Bolt, events manager for the conference center. “It will work with almost any theme for an event. Especially with a wedding, the colors will fade into the background.”

And couples will be able to start booking the ballrooms soon, as the conference center will officially open July 1.

“It was initially supposed to open in the fall, then the winter,” Taylor said, adding that the delays have made it challenging to book events.

The new apartments located above the conference center, comprising 40 units of supportive housing and 141 units of affordable housing, added some complications to the facility’s opening  as well. Because of the mixed-use aspect of the complex, additional coordination is needed to open both parts of the building at the same time.

“Coordinating all of the logistics is really key to getting the ribbon-cutting together,” said Craig Liston, regional vice president of convention centers for ASM Global, a venue and event management company that will help manage the conference center.

“For people to trust that we’re going to open in July and sign contracts with us, that’s been a huge challenge — just getting some traction and getting people through the doors,” said Taylor, who comes to the position after a long career at Genetti Hospitality in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where she worked on and off for a combined 30 years.

“I started my hospitality career there way back and held every position at the Williamsport location,” Taylor said.

Most recently, she was the general manager of Genetti Hotel & Suites.

“It was a good company for me,” Taylor said. “I learned everything I know now, which brought me to this role.”

Taylor had worked in Ithaca during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, from July 2020 to December 2021, as the director of sales and marketing at The Hotel Ithaca.

“I loved this area and made a lot of really good professional and personal friends here and maintained those friendships and relationships, even when I went back to Williamsport,” Taylor said. “Visit Ithaca called and asked if I would be interested in the position of GM here at the conference center, so those relationships I had maintained through the years helped me get that position, really.”

“I was here for the groundbreaking [of the conference center],” she added, “so it was like kismet to come back as GM, I say. It was full circle.”

Now, Taylor is looking forward to the finishing touches all coming together within the next few weeks. Currently, conference center employees can only go in the building with the contractors and hardhats on. Taylor and the other members of the conference center’s executive team are currently renting office space at the office of Welliver, the building’s construction company, and it will be nice to move into their offices located at the conference center, Taylor said. The last hurdle was passing the necessary fire suppression safety tests, which the building passed last week.

“So, fingers crossed, we can start moving furniture in next week,” Taylor said May 14. “And we’ll be working in the space. It’s going to change our lives.”

“It’s exciting,” she added. “It gets me out of bed in the morning, for sure,”

Seeing the space finished will be very satisfying, she said.

“Oh my gosh, it’s beautiful,” Taylor said. “It is very, very lovely, along with it being green and clean and sustainable.”

As the first fully electric conference center in the nation, it employs as many eco-friendly practices as possible. 

The building boasts the United States’ first all-electric commercial kitchen.

A chef who was tapped last year is no longer a part of the project, and Taylor said the conference center is hoping to finalize the hire of  a new chef soon.

“We are in the final throes of interviewing,” Liston said. “We’re looking for someone that obviously brings the culinary skills but also the front-of-house ability to engage with clients on a day-to-day basis. We want them to be the face of the food and beverage operations and not just someone who’s in the kitchen.”

Obtaining all of the proper equipment and fitting it into the budget was a challenge that will hopefully pay off down the line, Taylor said.

“I think in the Ithaca market, sustainability is very important,” Taylor said. “We are really looking to partner with the agricultural community and hoping to highlight the local agriculture here.”

“A lot of meeting planners are charting their impact on the environment, so the easier we can make that decision for them in choosing that green site the better,” Liston agreed.

Taylor is looking forward to adding jobs to the local economy, as is Liston.

“We’re looking at the apartments above as potential labor,” Liston said, adding that the hospitality aspect of the business will most likely employ 12 to 14 people, but large events will require up to 60 people on site. He said ASM is planning outreach to the building’s tenants. “You can’t beat the commute,” he said.

Taylor also expects that the conference center will bring an increase in local spending.

“We’re going to have the ability to bring large regional and state conferences to Ithaca, which has not been able to happen before,” she said, adding that Ithaca’s hotels are a convenient amenity to the area that also stand to benefit from the additional events hosted by the conference center.

“They are looking to us to help them put heads in beds, so to speak,” Taylor said.

The conference center is hoping to draw organizations from Albany. “There are associations in the capital region; the proximity of Ithaca is a beautiful thing. If you look at the state of New York, Ithaca is smack dab in the middle.”

There are six conferences tentatively booked for 2024 and 2025, but Taylor said bookings will start coming in quickly once the conference center is fully operational.

The retail space located on the first floor will serve beverages and sandwiches. The exact concept of the eatery is yet to be determined, but it will be a convenient grab-and-go food option for those living in the building’s residential space and others who live nearby or pass by on their way to work.

“There is a bus stop right across the street on Green Street,” Taylor pointed out. “People could pop in and grab a coffee and get on the bus.”

This article has been changed to reflect a correction regarding the apartments located in the conference center building. There are 40 units of supportive housing and 141 units of affordable housing.