The brand new Seattle Convention Center glows in light in this tripod and long-exposure photo of the massive venue in downtown Seattle, Washington on a cold but dry spring night on April 3, 2023. Photo technical data: Canon EOS1DX with 16-13mm/f 2.8, 800 ASA at two-seconds open … Expand to read more
Anthony Bolante | PSBJ
By Neetish Basnet – Data reporter, Puget Sound Business Journal
Mar 26, 2026
Story Highlights
What’s This?
- The Seattle Convention Center recorded its first positive operating income.
- The Summit Building expansion cost the center $1.9 billion.
- Cash reserves dropped to $25 million from $183 million.
Seattle Convention Center’s billion‑dollar wager on a downtown expansion is beginning to pay off as it looks to patch up its financial foundation.
The center recorded $1.4 million in net operating income in 2025 — the first positive year since 2019, before the pandemic decimated the events industry. The revenue exceeded the projected target by almost $2.8 million.
SCC President and CEO Jennifer LeMaster attributed the revenue growth to a “significant pickup” in in-person gatherings.
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“Seattle continues to see, despite some challenges that we’re all pretty familiar with, robust demand across meeting sectors,” LeMaster told the Business Journal.
But there’s a lot of room to grow.
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Jennifer LeMaster is the CEO of the Seattle Convention Center.
Sean Cokes
A decade since its conception and after several years of delays, SCC cut the ribbon on the spacious Summit Building in January 2023. When it was finally done, the project had a price tag of $1.9 billion.
While it more than doubled the campus footprint, the expansion left the center in a deep financial hole. SCC used bond proceeds to cover construction costs for the Summit Building.
Meanwhile, as events were canceled, the lodging tax revenues SCC depended on were not enough to cover rising operating and capital expenses. During the pandemic years, it had to dip into its cash reserves to meet its debt service obligations and offset insufficient revenue streams.
The center has seen its net position drop 36.8% from $499.66 million in 2019 to $316 million at the end of 2025.
Cash reserves currently sit around the $25 million, a steep drop from $183 million in 2018, when the Summit Building broke ground. Maintaining about $80 million in cash reserves is typically considered appropriate to fund 100 days of operations for an organization as large as the Seattle Convention Center.
“Coming out of the pandemic, not only had we depleted our reserves finishing the project, but now we are operating a convention campus, or a collection of assets that are not all contained within the same footprint,” said LeMaster, who took the helm after former CEO Jeff Blosser retired in 2024. “So, the operational complexity is three times as hard because you have people who are spread out, and you cannot have redundant equipment in every part of your building.”
Before the Summit addition, the standalone Arch Building fetched enough revenue to break even. But structurally, it was unable to cater to the needs of large event organizers.
In pitching the expansion project, the center had argued it was forced to turn away more than 300 conventions worth $1.5 billion over five years because it lacked adequate space.
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The Seattle Convention Center’s Arch Building at 705 Pike St. hosted 91 events in 2025.
Anthony Bolante | PSBJ
The expansion project added 573,770 square feet of meeting and events space. The center now spans 1.01 million square feet and has 139 total meeting rooms, up from 70 at the older Arch building.
Last year, the event count still fell short of 2019 levels, but attendance rose 4.3% from 2024 to 2025. SCC officials said attendance was impacted by unexpected cancellations, rotating events and lower than anticipated turnouts at returning events due to wider economic and political uncertainties.
Redmond-based Microsoft decided not to host its annual Build conference at the Seattle Convention Center this year, opting for a much smaller space in San Francisco. An SCC spokesperson said the move was very disappointing but the center backfilled the vacated dates with a volleyball tournament and two separate conventions.
Despite the drop in overall attendance, revenues have soared much higher since the Summit’s opening. The $66.52 million in operating revenue generated in 2025 was a 150.7% increase from 2022 and a 70.7% increase from 2019.
“There were years the Arch was doing 300 events by itself, but it was only generating a third of the revenue. So that means the team was working extraordinarily hard to bring in a third of the revenue that we’re generating today,” LeMaster said. “We are in a new class that we would not have been in as a city or as a destination had we not done the expansion.”
Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, the accreditation agency for the world’s top business schools, is hosting its international conference in the Summit Building this month. Last year, it was held in Vienna, Austria.
Sneaker Con came to Seattle for the first time in 2023. It is expected to bring 12,000 attendees this year to the Summit Building.
Cloud computing company Acumatica relocated its annual summit from Wynn Las Vegas to the Summit Building earlier this year.
“Why?” Jim Desler, vice president of communications at Acumatica, wrote in a post after announcing the change last year. “Simply put, we outgrew the Wynn’s facilities, and Seattle has the ideal facility and is the perfect location to imagine what’s possible in business technology.”
SCC has so far booked 185 events across its campus for 2026.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include revised attendance figures for 2025. The Seattle Convention Center originally reported a decline in attendance last year.