Dallas Convention Center

650 S. Griffin St. - 1957; 1973; 1984; 1994; 2002

The Dallas Convention Center started out as the Dallas Memorial Auditorium with an auditorium and arena built in 1957.  It was designed by Dallas Architect George L. Dahl.  In 1973, the building was expanded westward to Griffin Street, and it was renamed the Dallas Convention Center.  The 1973 addition was designed by Harrell & Hamilton.  The center was then expanded again in 1984 for the Republican National Convention by spanning over Griffin Street.  That addition was designed by Omniplan.  At that time the western face of the building was on Lamar Street.  The 1994 expansion extended the building over Lamar and westward to the end of the Jefferson Street bridge.  Loschky, Marquardt, & Nesholm from Seattle were the design architects and JPJ Architects were the Associate Architect.  In 2002, the center was expanded again to parallel the Jefferson Street Bridge.  This expansion placed the building over the railroad tracks that lead to Union Station.  The center has meeting rooms, ballrooms, exhibit halls, an arena, and a theater within the complex and is large enough to host two conventions at one time.  The long range plan for the facility is to construct a Convention Center Hotel, additional meeting rooms, and a grand ballroom. 

The center now has over 1,000,000 square feet of total space with 726,726 of contiguous exhibit space.  One of the exhibit halls has 203,000 square feet of column free space, making it the largest column-free exhibit hall at the time of construction.  The arena seats 9,816 and the theater seats 1,740.  The total size of the building is 2,067,542 square feet.  Another feature of the center is the Vertiport, which is designed to handle a total of 5 helicopters and 2 vertical-take-off-and-landing aircraft at the same time.  The Convention Center is also has a DART Light Rail Station.