GREATER FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The newly expanded Greater Fort Lauderdale/Broward County Convention Center has reopened with 800,000 square feet of space, including 350,000 square feet of contiguous exhibit space.
Work is in progress on the facility’s continued expansion, taking the project to a total of 1.2 million square feet by late 2025.
Broward County, Fla., leaders held a bond-signing ceremony late last month securing funding to finalize the new additions, including an eastside building with waterfront ballrooms, meeting rooms, kitchen facilities, and a five-acre outdoor waterfront plaza with three restaurants and an amphitheater in a park-like setting.
The project includes a planned 800-room headquarters hotel that will be connected to the convention center. The total cost for the convention center expansion and new hotel is estimated at $1.1 billion.
“The convention center expansion which will include a 65,000-square-foot waterfront ballroom, along with our expanded exhibit hall and other new features, makes Greater Fort Lauderdale highly competitive in the national convention landscape,” says Stacy Ritter, president & CEO of Visit Lauderdale. “The expansion is key to our continuing evolution as an upscale, cosmopolitan, and diverse tourism and meetings destination.”
The first event in the new exhibit space was the indoor portion of the 62nd Annual Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, and many more events and trade shows are now on the facility’s schedule.
The convention center expansion is expected to create more than 1,000 jobs and boost the Greater Fort Lauderdale economy by more than $200 million annually.
