Washington State Convention Center history

By its second full year of operation, the convention center was booking 80 events annually and attracting 375,000 attendees; its largest event was a national convention of Alcoholics Anonymous in July 1990, which drew 48,000 attendees.

A minor expansion was completed in July 1991, adding new banquet and meeting rooms and restoring elements of the project cut during earlier design revisions.

The expansion plan was endorsed by city council in late 1994, with the promise of protecting existing low-income housing in exchange for financial support.

In October 1996, the convention center board chose a two-block site on the north side of Pike Street over a proposed site on First Hill.

A key element of the expansion project was an arched glass canopy and skybridge over Pike Street between the two halves of the convention center, connecting at the fourth floor. Its design was ultimately given preliminary approval by the city council in August 1998, along with land use permits as part of the final approvals for the project.

Dissenting city council members re-opened the debate on the skybridge during consideration of a proposed street vacation, but the city council approved the design again in April 1999 to prevent a costly last-minute redesign.

The expanded convention center opened to the public on July 14, 2001.

A second major expansion of the convention center planned to double the amount of exhibition space with a new building on the site of the Convention Place transit station, was proposed in 2008 at a cost of $766 million.

The state legislature rejected the appropriation in May 2009, effectively putting the project on hold.

The space was transferred back to the WSCC and converted into a four-story business conferencing center, which opened in July 2010.

The proposal was revived in 2012 and expanded to include two triangular blocks to the north of the transit station, then occupied by a car dealership.

That same year, the convention center was re-branded as the Washington State Convention Center, dropping the word "trade". The facility's signs and furniture were replaced during a $21 million interior renovation completed in 2014, designed to fix wayfinding issues caused by inconsistent signage.

Skanska–Hunt were initially chosen as the project's general contractors but were removed from the project in March 2016.

Due to delays in receiving city approval and permits, construction was pushed back to May 2018 and its cost increased to $1.7 billion.

A $100 million loan from King County was proposed in December 2020 to continue work on the project, which had slowed during the pandemic.

In April 2021, the convention center announced that it had sold $342 million in municipal bonds to private institutions to fund the budget shortfall with approval from the Washington State Treasurer in lieu of public financing.