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Gaming event's organizer says convention center not up to par
The email from David Hoppe, president of Gen Con LLC, the huge gaming company and organizer of Indianapolis' largest annual convention, sounded ominous.
"I ... want to share a little bit of confidential feedback on the overall response of my recent concerns about Gen Con in Indy for the long term," he wrote in February to Leonard Hoops, president and CEO of Visit Indy, the organization that markets Indianapolis to tourists and convention planners.
Hoppe said he was pleased about the city's growing inventory of hotel rooms, transportation options and marketing support. But he was concerned about what he saw as technology shortcomings at the Indiana Convention Center.
He wanted the huge facility- with 71 meeting rooms, 11 exhibit halls and three ballrooms-to provide better technology, but didn't say exactly how or what.
"I'm pushing to evolve Gen Con into a tech-enhanced company delivering an amazing analog experience and I need Indy and the ICC to evolve with us," Hoppe wrote in an email IBJ obtained through a public records request. The vision the convention center had presented to that point was "not good enough," he wrote.
The unstated message: Gen Con might be forced to take its four-day convention with its 60,000 attendees and $75 million in direct spending elsewhere if local officials didn't get on the ball.
At Visit Indy, Hoops-the organization's top officer-forwarded Hoppe's note to Mayor Joe Hogsett's office on Feb. 6 with this brief notation: "FYI ... still much work to do here."
At City Hall, Hogsett's chief of staff, Thomas Cook, responded to Hoops that, if Gen Con just wanted an upgrade in tech infrastructure, such as Wi-Fi capability, video boards and 5G integration, the city might already be moving in that direction "and can package those efforts up" and communicate it to Hoppe in a way that "fit his tech-centric view."
But if Hoppe wanted something bigger-say, a large-scale overhaul of the convention center-Cook felt less confident how to respond. "I never fully understood the crux of [Hoppe's] vision for technology/facility improvements, and I didn't get the sense that anyone else did either," Cook wrote to Hoops.
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