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Capital's International Convention Center to get face lift By Ranit Nachum-Halevi Tags: Israel travel  Jerusalem's largest convention center, the International Convention Center - Binyanei Ha'uma, is about to receive an augmentation and a face lift. The building that has hosted two Eurovision contests, thousands of performances of every sort, conventions and even the 1987 trial of suspected Nazi concentration camp guard John Demjanjuk, will soon have commercial space, offices and hotel rooms. An estimated $80 million will be invested in the ICC complex, which was originally built by the Jewish Agency in the 1950s. Zeev Rechter designed this seven-story landmark at the western entrance to Jerusalem on land measuring 58 dunams. It has 26,000 square meters of developed space and 20,000 square meters of covered and open parking space. The center currently has 27 event halls, including the Ussishkin Auditorium, which seats 3,000 and the Teddy Auditorium, with 2,000 seats. In addition, the center has 15 seminar rooms for 20-400 participants and 12,000 square meters of display space in 10 separate areas, facilitating exhibitions and fairs with hundreds of exhibits. In 2007, the ICC hosted 355 events that generated about NIS 20 million in revenues. In the first half of 2008, the center hosted 160 events, generating NIS 10 million in revenues. These figures do not include the additional services provided by the ICC, which include security, parking and food, whose revenues are estimated at hundreds of thousands of dollars. Advertisement Over the years, the ICC has been renovated and expanded, particularly in the 1990s, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars. The Ussishkin Auditorium, built in 2006, alone cost NIS 3 million. Boring design The ICC's main challenges are the age of the building, the lack of medium and large halls, the boring architectural design that lacks the charm of similar centers around the world, inconvenient access routes, and the difficulty in hosting the many guests who visit the center each year. For the sake of comparison, the convention center in Frankfurt, Germany, covers about 321,000 square meters and includes a number of hotels, large event halls and spacious exhibition halls. The steering committee in charge of the renovation and expansion plans for the ICC consists of the center's board of managers and shareholders, headed by Amos Mar-Haim, and representatives from the Jewish Agency, the Tourism Ministry, the Jerusalem Municipality and professional consultants, including HOK Venue and Spector Amisar architects. The ICC's board plans to raise the required funds from all the involved parties, in order to prevent what happened in the 1950s, when the center's skeleton stood incomplete for a long time, due to lack of financing. "A country's convention center is part of its economic infrastructure, a national asset that promotes tourism, and must therefore be supported by all the parties," says ICC General Manager Mira Altman. The ICC will be enlarged by 30,000 square meters, which will include the doubling of the parking space and three 33-story buildings housing office and commercial space and a hotel of the highest standards - the latter to be built by a private developer at a cost of $100 million. The buildings will also house theaters and cinemas. "We are planning for the next 25 years," explains architect Arthur Spector. "Our goal is to build a place that will compete with the largest convention centers in Europe. Instead of the current entrance lobby and wide corridors, which have often been used as exhibition space, a specially designed 24-story building will be erected, with large exhibition halls with 12-meter ceilings. "Every self-respecting convention center needs appropriate exhibition space," he continues. "At present, anyone who wants to hold a car or construction equipment exhibition, for example, cannot use the existing corridor space, so the center must be expanded to meet potential exhibitors' needs." Jerusalem as a brand "A subway station will be built beneath the ICC, to make the center accessible to all forms of transportation, just like other such centers around the world. The plaza between the ICC and the Central Bus Station will be redesigned to include cafes and restaurants, creating a continuum of the center's open space," adds Spector. The question remains, however, whether all this is worth the investment, considering the facilities already available at the Israel Trade Fairs and Convention Center in Tel Aviv. "The ICC is nothing like the trade fairs center," counters Altman. "The ICC cannot become a trade fairs center, and the trade fairs center cannot host any convention that books the ICC. The fairgrounds host huge exhibitions with open stalls, which we cannot hold here. "The Conference of Presidents [of Major American Jewish Organizations], for example, cannot be held at the trade fair center," continues Altman. "They have no infrastructure for the technology such a convention requires, and anyone who mixes the two together has no idea what he is talking about. Furthermore, Jerusalem as a brand is an excellent marketing tool. Jerusalem is a holy city for everyone, and conventions are held here, among other reasons, for the location." 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