Related story: If you build it

By Andrea Stape
Journal Staff Writer

Photographer Connie Grosch first approached me about doing a story on a year in the life of the Rhode Island Convention Center in the beginning of 2003. She had been snapping events at the center, and was struck by how random they were. She thought it would be great to develop a package highlighting that quirkiness -- she also thought it would be particularly timely, since the center's 10th anniversary was December 2003.

Over the course of the year Connie and I checked out events at the convention center (Connie much more than I). And they lived up to her description -- the events were weird, random and fun.

During the second week in November, as the anniversary loomed, I talked to Sunday Editor Peter Phipps about what I had gathered. There was a lot of color on the events at the convention center and a ton of financial information about the performance of the center, or lack thereof.

After 10 years the convention center still has not paid off its debts.

The state will have to pay $23 million a year, until 2023, to pay off the costs of building that complex. A look backward showed a lot of public officials and business leaders had made a lot of promises about what this meeting space could do for the state's economy. But it was really hard to concretely pin down whether the center had actually lived up to the hype.

Peter cautioned me a number of times during our conversation that this could end up being a boring story if I wasn't careful. Peter suggested weaving together the complex's colorful life and its not-so-colorful balance sheet.

We decided that using the events to illustrate what this complex had really become -- hype aside -- was the best approach. Despite the difficulty in determining whether it was creating a financial windfall for the state, it was very clear that the convention center had become a social center for Rhode Island. The last thing Peter said to me as our conversation was ending was, ``We don't want this story to be boring.''

So I went through my notes, took a long look at Connie's photos, and picked out some of the events that I thought would really give readers a sense of what this complex has become. I loved her photo of Blue Cross' Mighty Molar -- and I remembered the guy dressed up like a molar cavorting around the Business Expo. I knew I had to find a way to work him into the story because it was the perfect illustration of the Rhode Island wackiness that fills that building over the course of the year.

But as much as the events told the story of the convention center, so did the financials. The numbers had to go in. I tried to make them as digestible as possible by throwing in color from the center events and adding voices to break up the blocks of statistics. Ultimately, the numbers did have some shock value -- every taxpayer in this state is contributing to that $23-million-a-year debt payment and will be for the next 20 years.

And then -- when I looked at Cecilia Prestamo's layout for the page a few days before it ran -- there was the Mighty Molar smiling away in full color!

So...thanks to Peter P. for his coaching. And thanks to Connie G. for her amazing photos -- I couldn't have told the story without them.

A year at Rhode Island Convention Center slideshow