The Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex completed a $140 million expansion in 2000, creating even more versatile convention facilities. Located on seven square blocks in downtown Birmingham, the center is only ten minutes from the airport. Its facilities include the Exhibition Hall, covering 220,000 square feet and featuring 74 meeting rooms to accommodate up to 1,200 participants; the 3,000-seat Concert Hall, one of the most acoustically effective structures in the country; the 1,000-seat Theatre, with a moveable stage that can be adjusted to suit differing performance requirements; and the Arena, which seats 19,000 people, making it one of the largest such facilities in the southeast. Within the Complex, the ten-story Medical Forum building contains classrooms, meeting space, commercial office suites and an auditorium. The Complex also features retail operations including the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame, and adjoining 770-room Sheraton Birmingham hotel.
The newly renovated art deco Boutwell Municipal Auditorium offers a main arena seating capacity of 5,700 people and an exhibition hall capacity of 1,000. About 20 minutes from the airport, the Bessemer Civic Center has a main hall that seats 1,600 people and additional meeting rooms for up to 300 people. Arthur's Conference Center is an elegant new facility with 1,560 square feet of meeting/banquet space that can be broken down into three smaller rooms. With a total of more than 14,000 hotel and motel rooms in the metropolitan area, many of them having gone through renovations in the 1990s and in the early part of the new century, Birmingham is ready to accommodate large and small groups.
Convention Information: Greater Birmingham Convention and Visitors Bureau, 2200 North Avenue North, Birmingham, AL 35203; telephone (800)458-8085