The backup plan Mandalay Bay offered was the property across the street from the convention center – a parking lot. Slagle: They said they could construct what they called ‘tented tructures.’ Translation: tents. Slagle: We were skeptical, believe me. They said, ‘Look, if for some reason that won’t work for you, we will reimburse your cost.’ That was built into the contract. But that didn’t solve our problem, because we needed to have The PPAI Expo that year. But we crossed our fingers and negotiated our contract. We had done our homework and had a good plan. Vincent: I was new, and the idea of having to market the move of a well-established trade show to a new city and a convention center that wasn’t even complete yet seemed like a pretty big ask, not to mention a bit risky for the show itself. Greenberg: A big part of the story is the courage of the PPAI Board of Directors, who voted to move a 25,000-person Expo in nine months to a building that didn’t have a roof yet. It didn’t even have a second floor yet. Bellantone: When faced with the realization that not moving The PPAI Expo was riskier than the construction and logistics, it became a matter of seamless execution, not endless evaluation and second guessing. Slagle: The board was just as skeptical as staff about, ‘What if they don’t get the doggone building done?’ Things became even more tense in August when a rumor came out in an industry publication that Mandalay Bay would not be ready for The PPAI Expo in January. Greenberg was in Long Beach, California, with his wife, Debbie, for the SAAC show when the report came out. Telephone assurances wouldn’t suffice in this instance. Greenberg: We called our [Mandalay Bay] sales manager, and I said, ‘I want a hardhat tour.’ So, Debbie and I drove through the desert, and we went to Vegas, where they hosted us. [Afterwards] I was able to announce that the building that didn’t have a second floor in April was hanging wallpaper on the third floor when we visited. Slagle: We went in December for an executive committee meeting of the Board to see the finished product. They were still painting. They were still doing things in the interior, but the structure was up. They delivered. We were like, ‘We don’t believe you did this in nine months.’ We were the first full-building trade show they held. The Moment Arrives: “There were a lot of heroes that year.” While people both inside and outside of PPAI headquarters wondered if Mandalay Bay would finish construction in time, PPAI staff had a monumental task of preparing to hold the industry’s biggest event based solely on blueprints. Slagle, meanwhile, had to break the news to the Dallas Convention Center and address the contracts PPAI had with Dallas hotels. Slagle: The biggest cost to us was the hotel contracts, some of which were three years in duration. Greenberg: Steve and David Woods (PPAI chief operating officer, 2002-2003), aka Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, went to see each of the hotels with checks in hand. Slagle: We went to all the hotels in Dallas, met with them and talked about what we were doing. And we made good on all the contracts we had in place. We paid, inmy memory, just over $1 million to “[We] drove through the desert and went to Vegas… I was able to announce that the building that didn’t have a second floor in April was [now] hanging wallpaper on the third floor.” A little over four months before The PPAI Expo, an industry publication reported a rumor that the Mandalay Bay Convention Center would not be completed in time for the event. So PPAI Board Chair Wayne Greenberg and his wife, Debbie, drove from the trade show they were attending in Long Beach, California, to Las Vegas and insisted on a hardhat tour so that he could provide personal assurance the project was on track. PPAI Expo | Twenty Years in Las Vegas | FEATURE | DECEMBER 2022 | 69
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzU4OQ==