Anyone versed in the basics of economics knows that there is no such thing as a free lunch – unless you are shopping for a hotel to host your association’s next convention and you are plied with free tastings of dinner menus for your approval. The rest of us have to pay one way or another.
Nonetheless a free lunch is also what a quartet of Springfield area officials – state Sen. Doris Turner, state Rep. Mike Coffey, Springfield Mayor Misty Buscher and Sangamon County Board Chair Andy Van Meter – are offering the taxpayers of Springfield. They hope to set up a new tourism authority that will collect money from local hotel and sales taxes and use it to back bonds to finance doubling – double! – the size of the renamed Prairie Capital Convention Center and (ideally) build a 200-300-room modern – modern! – full-service hotel next door.
That will put Springfield in the same league, square-footage-wise, as Peoria, the big name in downstate events hosting. By moving up from a small to a medium convention destination, Springfield will attract more and/or bigger conventions, more overnight stays and fatter sales and hotel taxes. Oh, it will be like the old days when the VFW or the insurance adjusters were in town and the joint was jumping seven days a week.
OK, maybe not seven days a week. Or even seven days a month. But the people of Springfield won’t have to pay for it, that’s the important thing. “Without a doubt, this is true economic development,” Turner has explained, “that will bring jobs and tourism dollars to downtown without Springfield residents having to pay any new taxes.”
Turner et. al. know this because they hired a consultant who told them so. The firm of Conventions, Sports & Leisure International (CSL) predicted that doubling the size of the BOS Center could mean doubling the number of conventions coming to town. Could – but will? Let us not say that this rhetoric is “delusional” or even “extravagant;” that would be rude. We will call it “hopeful.” The consultants are not lying, exactly. They’re hope merchants, and no one ever went broke in this country telling people in power what they want to hear. And every elected official wants to hear that she can pay for public improvements without having to ask her particular voting public to pay for it.
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The consultants estimate that the Springfield project would have a $77 million annual economic impact and create 557 temporary construction jobs. Making such estimates is more art than science – a lot more. (Are they certain it’s not 556?) The cost of some elements of the plan can be calculated with more certainty. If both the new hall and the hotel are built, the bill would come to $180-$200 million. With luck, the increased traffic will bring in maybe $3–$6 million in tax revenue. That should be enough to pay off the money borrowed to build it, although it will take at least 30 and maybe even 50 years. During that time, paying off the debt is likely to consume every penny the project will earn for the new tourism authority. Visitors will be paying for the downtown improvements but visitors also are likely to be the only ones getting the benefit of them. And the risks of failure will be borne by taxpayers.
As noted, making Adams Street great again will probably pay back enough to cover its construction costs, but the consultants’ larger promises to revitalize a moribund downtown are of the sort that make sense only to a lover who yearns to be seduced again. Project backers point out that Springfield earns about $20 million annually from “tourism,” a catch-all term that includes all kinds of visitors. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Springfield metropolitan area’s GDP in 2023 was $12.071 billion. Tourism thus generates roughly $1 for every $600 in gross output hereabouts and conventions are only a smallish part of that. That’s why the BOS Center brings in only about $2.8 million a year, which is about $2 million a year less than it costs to run it.
To borrow a phrase, central Illinois can’t get rich by stealing each other’s laundry. Having a bigger hall is necessary for success as a convention town but it is not sufficient. Springfield offers visitors a dead president for their off-hours diversion; in Peoria they can take a virtual ride in a two-and-a-half story Cat 797F Mining Truck. A bulked-up BOS Center will steal a show from Peoria now and then but only by giving event planners deals on rates, free days and other money-losing concessions. The only thing Springfield is likely to achieve by taking on Peoria in a constrained market is to ensure that neither city fares well.
That’s the problem with free lunches. They usually aren’t worth what you pay for them, no matter how hungry you are.
Mr. Krohe has lived off and on in downtown Springfield since 1970 and has watched its revival with interest several times.
This article appears in April 16-22, 2026.
