the types of events it had in the past, but also wanted it to do much more. Numerous charrettes were held by the planning committee with the stakeholders of the venue. In the meantime, a temporary For about 20 months, this structure hosted numerous events to allow some sort of normalcy to take place so that the community could still come together for the annual events. This structure sat on the foundation of the old venue while plans were drawn There was some debate about what
type of facility to build. The community still wanted an events center that could hold public events like concerts, home shows, and craft shows as had happened in the past. The Visitor & Convention Bureau wanted to be able to attract regional and state conferences. There were already plans for new hotels going up in the city center that could help make this possible. The County met with city leaders, current stakeholders, and citizens to develop a plan for the new facil- ity. It was decided to build a facility that could host the local public events but also attract conferences and regional sporting events that could stay in the local hotels. In January 2009, the Charlotte Harbor Event & Conference Cen- ter opened to the public. The facility had a 20,000-square foot room dubbed the “Hibiscus Hall” as Punta Gorda is known as the Hibis- cus City. It could be divided into three smaller event spaces. The two meeting rooms would be called the Peace & Myakka rooms as they
are the two rivers that feed into Charlotte Harbor. Surprisingly, from the outset, the two small meeting rooms were booked much more than the larger event space. The building’s location easily accessible Although the country was in the midst of a recession, two new hotels and several local restaurants opened their doors around the time of the opening of the new Charlotte Har- bor Event & Conference Center in early 2009. There would be 355 hotel rooms within a two-block radius of the “Event Center.” A booking policy was created in which the Event Center management would focus on booking local events while the visitors bureau worked to bring sporting events and state-wide confer- ences to the facility.
The Charlotte Harbor Event & Conference Center will soon be
celebrating its 10th anniversary. It is a testament to a community that was focused on rebuilding after a hurricane, not just to simply recover, but make its community better than it was before. While the storm devastated the area, it created the opportunity of a clean slate so that the community could be built back better than it was before. FM
This is what we call HD.
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