Trade-Show Leaders Object to Plan to Close NYC’s Javits Center

Some of the biggest names in the trade-show industry are banding together and voicing their opposition to a plan to replace New York’s Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan with a new facility in Queens. Friends of Javits—a coalition of exposition organizers that first formed more than four years ago to fight a plan to sell land around the center—last month sent a letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and copies to 600 more state and local officials.

In the letter, members say they will not patronize the proposed $4 billion convention center that Malaysian gaming company Genting Group intends to build by its Resorts World Casino at the Aqueduct Racetrack in Ozone Park. While not opposed to the construction of a convention facility in Queens, the letter’s signers wrote that they are “adamant that the Javits Center remain open long term.”

Groups who attached their name to the letter include event-management companies Freeman, George Little Management, Messe Frankfurt, Metropolitan Exposition Services and Reed Exhibitions and such major trade groups as the National Retail Federation and Toy Industry Association. Together these groups represent the majority of the large expositions at the Javits Center, including the International Restaurant & Foodservice Show, New York International Gift Fair, New York Comic Con and Texworld USA and American International Toy Fair. crainsnewyork.com