TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTWO/WAWV) — The Vigo County Capital Improvement Board met Wednesday to discuss the improvements and progress of the Terre Haute Convention Center.
All exterior glass is expected to be installed this week with the parking garage almost fully cemented. The convention center team said they are excited to begin showing the progress to potential clients.
“Now I have something that I can really start to share with clients as we start to talk to them about events and prospecting,” General Manager Tennille Wanner said. “At some point in the near future we’ll be able to bring meeting planners through and they’ll be able to actually see the space walk the space.”
Another announcement from the meeting was the approval of the center’s official logo.
“It’s pretty simple, yet it’s modern and it’ll be effective in selling that,” Mayor Duke Bennett said. “Keeping things simple and just getting people excited about it is really really important to getting this thing going.”
As the convention center inches closer to completion, it will need workers to help it be successful. The center is also working to provide college students with employment opportunities.
“I’ve had a lot of conversations with ISU and most recently IVY Tech. I feel like a lot of our job pool will come from students,” Wanner said. “We also like to offer internships, where we can start an employee and or intern in one department and work them throughout our building and to the different departments so that they can truly understand what the hospitality field is all about.”
Bennett said he’s not only pleased with the progress, but the project’s budget as well.
“We’re under budget which on this significant size of project, that’s kind of unheard of a lot of times,” Bennett said. “The entire commission is that we’re doing exactly what we said we were going to be able to do in the right time frame.”
Progress is also being made on collection of items for the Larry Bird museum that will be located in the convention center. Construction will soon begin on the connector from the center to the Hilton Garden Inn.
