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Show Conventioneers return to Utah as tourists, study says Under the leadership of John Major Scowcroft, chairman of the committee's education subcommittee, subcom-mittee, presentations on statewide benefits of an expanded Salt Palace are being made across the state at meetings of Rotary, Kiwanis, Chamber of Commerce and other business groups. a convention center with surrounding surroun-ding cities such as San Diego, which now has 354,000 square feet of convention center space; Denver which has 300,000; Reno has 261,000 (as of 1991) and Phoenix, with 223,000," Robson added. 'A study of Coopers & Lybrand, national accounting firm, shows that the proposed expansion of the Salt Palace will create 7,100 new jobs in Utah in addition to expaning tourism across our state, from Logan to St. George and from Vernal Ver-nal to Wendover, observed Truman F. Clawson, chairman of the Salt Lake Area Chamber of Commerce Salt Palace Modernization Moderniza-tion Committee. Clawson added that the Coopers & Lybrand study shows that the cumulative benefits of an expanded Salt Palace will bring a total of $539 million in convention spending spen-ding to the state during the first six years of the expanded facility. "The expansion will also bring an increase during that period of $33 million in state sales tax revenues and $16 million in additional addi-tional income taxes," Clawson said. "Studies show that 26 percent of persons who come to conventions in the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City return to Utah for vacation trips the following year," Richard E. Davis said this week. Davis is president and chief executive ex-ecutive officer of the Salt Lake Convention and Visitors Bureau. "That is just one of the reasons we need to obtain funding at the forthcoming for-thcoming session of the Utah Legislature, beginning Jan. 14, for enlarging and modernizing the Salt Palace convention center," Davis added. Funding for the proposed modernization moder-nization and enlargement of the Salt Palace is pegged at $62 million and would come from the state of Utah, Salt Lake County and Salt Lake City. "The proposed expansion will increase the size of the convention center from 200,000 to 300,000 square feet," said R. Thayne Rob-son, Rob-son, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Convention and Visitors Bureau. "This expansion will once again make Salt Lake City competitive as |
