Jun. 14--Atlanta's Supercomm run may be nearing its end. 

The mega telecommunications show is slated to be in the Georgia World Congress Center for another year, then it will move to Chicago through 2006. 

What happens after that is undecided. It's a $70 million question, measured by the show's impact on the local economy. 

Show officials say they want to come back to Atlanta, but if attendance continues to grow as rapidly as it has -- 20 percent a year over the last three years -- by 2007 it will have outgrown even an expanded GWCC and will require more hotel rooms than the city currently has. 

Attendance at the 2001 show here last week was up as well, although a more modest 4 percent, which Supercomm officials blamed on the economy. 

"We've just grown out of capacity," said Jack Chalden, general manager of Supercomm, which has been in Atlanta since 1988. 

Supercomm illustrates both the struggle that convention cities have luring the mega shows and the strong tie between the convention industry and hotel room availability. 

In a convention city like Atlanta, "a lot of hotels really live and die based on their ability to accommodate conventions and the meeting business," said Mark Woodworth, executive managing director of the hospitality research group of PKF Consulting. 

On the flip side, industry watchers say it's difficult to attract large shows if there aren't enough convenient rooms. Atlanta lost the Super Show, the world's largest sporting goods show, to Las Vegas in part because the city lacked sufficient convention center space and hotel rooms. 

Supercomm's Chalden said attendees stayed in 100 hotels spread across the metro area and used 25 transportation routes. The ideal situation, he said, would be to have enough rooms close to the convention center. 

Atlanta has 20,200 hotel rooms in downtown, Midtown and Buckhead, according to PKF. By contrast, Chicago has 28,000 downtown rooms with another 4,600 planned by 2004. 

And there's not much on Atlanta's horizon. 

The only large, full-service hotel on the drawing board is expansion of the Omni Hotel at CNN. It will add a second tower and nearly 600 new rooms in 2004. 

Some new hotel growth is expected around the GWCC as it expands and also in outlying areas like the market around Hartsfield International Airport. 

Metro Atlanta's hotel supply is expected to increase 1.7 percent this year, the smallest growth rate since the early 1990s. In 1996, the year of the Olympics here, supply grew 8 percent. In 1997, it grew 10 percent. 

PKF Consulting's projections go to 2002, when supply is expected to rise by 2.6 percent. That would bring the number of hotel rooms to 90,600 in the metro area. 

But Chicago may have another edge over Atlanta. 

The Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, which owns and operates the convention center, McCormick Place, recently got approval to add 800,000 square feet of space, securing its place as the nation's largest convention facility. Once the $800 million expansion is complete in 2007, the center will have 2.8 million square feet of exhibit space and 560,000 square feet of meeting rooms. 

The GWCC expansion, due to open in 2002, will add 420,000 square feet of exhibit space and 100,000 of meeting space and ballrooms. When that project is completed, GWCC will have 1.4 million of exhibit space and 320,000 square feet of meeting space. 

Although Atlanta convention officials aren't ready to give up on luring Supercomm back, they say smaller shows are a convention city's bread and butter. Mega shows like Supercomm and the Super Show are rare. Of the 53 trade shows scheduled for the GWCC this year, the average size is 400,000 square feet. 

"We'll always keep our eye on it because Supercomm is a good customer," said Dan Graveline, executive director of GWCC. 

Among competing convention cities, center managers generally believe the more space the better. But that's not just because they want to get the big shows. Convention center managers realize those mega shows, while lucrative, often tie up a facility for days before and after a show. The key is to have the space available to get a mega show, or to hold multiple smaller shows simultaneously. 

Many think Atlanta has an adequate hotel room supply for most of its conventions and meetings, said PKF's Woodworth. 

"No one ever wants to build a church just for Easter Sunday," he said. "Atlanta meets the needs of 99 percent of the group meeting and conventions in the U.S. The last 1 percent is just too big for Atlanta." 

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(c) 2001, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.