The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center is searching for a new leader after Michael Sawaya, who has run the complex since 2018, resigned to take the top job at the Audubon Nature Institute.
As president and CEO, Sawaya, who resigned on Thursday, had been managing a half-billion-dollar renovation of the decades-old facility and led it through the pandemic, when business and convention travel virtually halted. Over the past two years, the facility has seen a rebound in major events as Sawaya has also worked on the massive River District project.
Convention center board chairperson Russell Allen, who was appointed to the oversight board earlier this year, said the commissioners are embarking on “an extensive national search” to replace Sawaya.
“We cannot thank Mike enough for his leadership in honing the mission and vision of our Convention Center and propelling us to the top of the national conventions, meetings and events market,” said Allen in a prepared statement.
The board had no advance notice of the resignation and had no immediate plans to name an interim CEO, according to two people familiar with the matter who weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the commission’s next steps.
The sun sets over the site of the future River District neighborhood in New Orleans, Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2024. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
The next CEO will take on the job, with is responsibility for more than 400 employees and $110 million in annual revenue, at a time when the organization faces some big challenges.
It is currently in the middle of the $557 million refurbishment project, the mile-long facility’s first major overhaul since it was built in 1984. The public-private project known as the River District envisions building a $1 billion-plus new neighborhood over the next decade, with offices, apartments, entertainment venues and retail areas, on upriver land owned by the center.
The new chief would also have to take on the task of pushing through a $570 million “headquarters hotel,” which Sawaya wants to build in partnership with the Omni Hotel Group on newly acquired land in the Warehouse District.
Into the fire
Sawaya, 64, said Thursday that he hadn’t sought to leave the convention center job but had been persuaded by Ron Forman, the long-serving head of the Audubon Nature Institute, to throw his hat in the ring. He was chosen out of more than 500 applicants.
A Mississippi native, Sawaya was hired six years ago to replace Bob Johnson who had run the facility for the previous decade. He had previously run the convention center and other facilities, including the Alamodome, in San Antonio and before that was a long-serving Omni Hotel Group executive.
The New Orleans convention center plays a crucial role in the city’s hospitality industry, hosting about 80 events a year and attracting around 180,000 visitors. Two-thirds of its revenue comes from its share of hotel and other hospitality taxes.
The facility’s leadership has long argued that it more than pays back its tax subsidy through its economic impact, which includes generating an estimated $174 million in city and state taxes through the money conventioneers spend on hotel rooms, in restaurants and other expenditures. They have also argued that it needs to run a surplus of about $20-to-$25 million a year in order to make new investments to stay competitive with rival cities like Memphis and Orlando.
“We are confident that their next leader will embrace the importance of the Convention Center to the entire New Orleans community,” said Walt Leger, head of the city’s tourism marketing agency, New Orleans & Co., via email.
Sawaya found himself in the middle of heated negotiations early in his tenure as Mayor LaToya Cantrell sought a deal with the state to redirect millions of tourism dollars — including a payment of $28 million from the convention center — to help fix the city’s crumbling infrastructure.
That deal that was ultimately reached also included a concession that would allow the center’s new headquarters hotel to make a reduced payment in lieu of property taxes for its first three years.
The Festival Park section of the 1984 World’s Fair was located on land now occupied by Mississippi River Heritage Park in New Orleans’ Warehouse District, photographed on March 29, 2019. (Photo by Mike Scott, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune). The Omni Convention Center hotel plan would incorporate the park in ways yet to be set out by developers.
Though Sawaya initially had a deal in place in 2020 to build a 1,200-room Omni hotel on a site at the upriver end of the complex, the financial backer for that project pulled out during the pandemic and efforts to revive that plan fizzled.
The new hotel proposal calls an 800-room hotel rising more than 20 stories above the site that is currently occupied by the Sugar Mill event space. It also incorporates the adjacent Mississippi River Heritage Park. Some local residents have begun to organize against the project, saying it would exceed current zoning restrictions and eliminate green space in the area.