Growing Concern over Viability of $800 Mil Convention Center

BOSTON-While members of the city council here grow increasingly concerned over the viability of the convention center being built on the waterfront in South Boston, the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority insists that the financial outlook for the project is sound.

A hastily called meeting between the city council, members of the Boston Redevelopment Authority and representatives of the MCCA was convened recently in which city council members noted that the city’s plunging hotel occupancy rate could have serious implications for the convention center. But Andy Antrobus, spokesperson for the MCCA, tells GlobeSt.com that “we can’t predict the short-term economic future but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t plan for the long-term economic future.” Antrobus notes that the center is to be completed in 2004, which gives the city time to recoup from its recent economic struggle.

But a spokeswoman for council member Peggy Davis Mullen tells GlobeSt.com that Davis-Mullen “does not think the center is feasible. She has been saying for a while that this center is way overboard moneywise and is burden on taxpayers.”