Gaylord Announces Major Expansion

The Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center announced plans for a major expansion of its facilities today, adding more convention center space and a new luxury hotel.

The 400-million dollar project would increase Gaylord’s convention center by 400-thousand feet and create 13-hundred new jobs. Gaylord C-E-O Colin Reed says the project is not designed to compete with a new convention center proposed for downtown.

“We induce a different demand into the market because customers want this all under one roof experience. It’s very hard for a meeting planner to schlep people around a city and put people in different hotels. And that’s what they don’t have to do in a hotel like this. We can put two, three thousand people, four thousand under one roof here.”

Supporters of the proposed downtown convention center want to pay for its construction with a new tourism tax. Gaylord has chosen to say silent on the issue, but others have said it’s unfair for Gaylord to pay a tax to finance its competition.

Reed now says Gaylord has reached a deal with convention center backers– Gaylord will support the downtown project, if part of its own expansion can be paid for with tax revenues generated by Gaylord’s new facilities.

The expansion will be built on existing Opryland property between the current hotel and the mall. Gaylord has still not decided what it plans on doing with a 105-acre parcel it owns across Briley Parkway.

If approved this year, the project is slated to be finished in 2010.