Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland to reopen with April bridal show after year-plus closure

The Convention Center of Clevleand

Cleveland's convention center, closed since March 2020, is expected to reopen next month. (Chuck Crow/The Plain Dealer)Chuck Crow/The Plain Dealer

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland next month is poised to host its first event in more than a year, a bridal show that is expected to attract thousands of visitors to downtown.

It’s a significant milestone for the hospitality industry in Cleveland, which has been decimated by the coronavirus pandemic.

The event has not yet been officially sanctioned by the Cleveland Department of Public Health. But officials from the convention center and city are having conversations about how it can be held safely.

If all goes well, Today’s Bride Wedding Show will run April 10-11 at the convention center, the venue’s first public event since early March 2020, when the facility hosted Wizard World Comic-Con.

Jennifer Fyffe, vice president of Akron-based Today’s Bride, was thrilled that the event was likely to take place. This past year, she said, her organization has canceled four consumer shows, which connect local brides and grooms to DJs, florists, venues and other wedding vendors.

“We’re a local business. We represent hundreds of local businesses. It’s our livelihoods,” she said.

One of those vendors is Ryan Konikoff, chief operating officer of Rock the House Entertainment Group, who called the Today’s Bride event “the Super Bowl of bridal shows.”

“The idea of a bridal show may seem frivolous to some,” he said. “But it’s more important than it’s ever been.”

He noted that this past year was close to a complete loss for the industry. The wedding industry, like the hospitality industry, has been devastated by the pandemic.

“The convention center show is the largest show that our market sees,” said Konikoff. “No other show comes close to what this show can do from a revenue standpoint.”

In recent years, the Today’s Bride event has been held at the I-X Center, which closed abruptly last fall because of the pandemic.

Several of the consumer shows formerly held at the I-X Center have moved to the downtown convention center, including the NARI Home Improvement Show, running May 14-16, and the Cleveland Auto Show, scheduled for December. (Meanwhile, a lawsuit against the operator of the I-X Center, filed by the Auto Show and others, is pending in court.)

Ohio has been relatively slow to open up its meetings and conventions business, and tourism officials in recent months have expressed concern that the region could lose out on future events without a proscribed reopening plan.

Ron King, general manager of the convention center, said the timing is right for the reopening, given the declining number of COVID cases in Ohio and nationally, and increasing vaccination rates.

“This is what we’ve been waiting for,” he said.

He noted that the bridal show is scheduled just ahead of the NFL Draft, an internationally televised event that King believes can serve to reintroduce Cleveland to the world.

The convention center will operate under the new state rules governing entertainment venues, announced in late February, which cap indoor attendance at 25% of capacity.

For the bridal show, that means attendance of about 2,000 people at any given time, depending on how much space is in use. Fyffe said timed tickets should go on sale this weekend. Visitors will have their temperatures scanned at the entrance, with one-way aisles directing traffic throughout the exhibit hall.

The convention center, built by county taxpayers in 2013, lost $4.7 million last year due to the dramatic decline in business.

After the center’s March closure, the only revenue coming in was from Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, which held trials in the facility last fall to better space out participants.

King said he is looking forward to getting back to the convention business. “Coming out of this, we’re going to be very conservative,” he said. “But if a school can do it, we can too.”

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