It was built to throw a party for a city's 250th birthday: the complex opened with HemisFair '68, the world's fair that remade downtown San Antonio, and never stopped hosting. The Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, at 900 East Market Street along the River Walk, is today a 1.6-million-square-foot facility hosting more than 300 events and 750,000 delegates a year. The original 1968 complex - exhibit hall, domed arena and theatre, built for 10.9 million dollars on urban-renewal land - anchored the fairgrounds beneath the new Tower of the Americas. The arena became famous in its own right as the home of the San Antonio Spurs until 1993; it was demolished in 1995 for expansion, and the complex took Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez's name in 1976. Successive expansions in 1977, 1986, 2001 and 2016 rebuilt the centre almost entirely: the 325-million-dollar eastern expansion - the largest capital project in city history at the time - delivered 514,000 square feet of contiguous exhibit space, 86,500 square feet of column-free multipurpose hall, more than 70 meeting rooms and the largest ballroom in Texas, while the original western wing came down to reconnect the reborn Hemisfair park with downtown. The 2,319-seat Lila Cockrell Theatre - the surviving piece of the 1968 construction, named for the trailblazing four-term mayor - remains the centre's performing-arts jewel, its river-facing lobby and restored Juan O'Gorman mosaic mural linking the convention machine to the city's cultural life. Fiesta events, graduations and concerts share it with convention general sessions. Logistics are the centre's ace: it sits directly on the River Walk, three blocks from the Alamo, with the Grand Hyatt attached and thousands of hotel rooms within a ten-minute walk - a compactness few American convention cities can match.

Type: Indoor Event Space

Address: 900 E. Market Street, San Antonio, TX, United States, 78205

Telephone: (210) 207-8500

Website: https://www.sahbgcc.com

Opening Date: 06/04/1968

Serves Food

Accessible