It may be fitting that the I-X Center will be going out with a bang when it hosts its final consumer show next month. That is, the bang of a thousand piston-powered machines—of rat rods, muscle cars, drag racers, police cruisers, monster trucks and Korean War-era military tank.
Otherwise known as the Car Parts Warehouse I-X Piston Powered Auto-Rama, which will be the final major event at Cleveland’s largest convention center when it discontinues all shows at the end of March.
It’s an appropriate end for the half-million-square-foot space, which has made a name for hosting trade shows and exhibitions focused on living and moving — the Auto Show, the RV Show, the Cleveland Boat Show and the Great Big Home & Garden Show. (The “Big Four,” insiders call it.)
And a kind of sad one at that.
Since developer Ray Park re-developed a chocolate-colored aircraft engine plant into the Midwest’s largest event space in 1985, the International Exhibition Center’s solidified itself into a special place in Cleveland culture, exemplified by the 1990s nostalgia of the “I-X Indoor Amusement Park” jingle.
“For more than four decades, the I-X Center has welcomed over 50 million guests through its doors for events that became lifelong traditions,” general manager Lisa Vo wrote in a statement.
March’s Auto-Rama, she said, allows Clevelanders “one last time to celebrate not only incredible vehicles, but memories made inside this building.” (Vo declined to comment in a phone call.)
Ever since the Huntington Convention Center opened up downtown in 2013, the I-X struggled to keep what was pretty much a monopoly on sizable events held in Northeast Ohio. At 2.3 million square feet of total space, it was among the top three exhibition centers in the country, third to the Las Vegas Convention Center and International Agri-Center in Tulare, Cali.
There’s the fringe benefits, as well. Annual shows often brought in hundreds of millions of dollars a year to nearby hotels, restaurants and stores.
The pandemic didn’t help. And by late 2022, an erected wall curtailed the center’s space by a fourth. Amazon and an unnamed EV battery manufacturer considered deals. Earlier this week, that deal with the latter, a Fortune 100 company, fell through, NEOtrans reported.
The center’s end as a Midwestern beacon for trade shows has led to what will be years of anxiety for hosts, especially those Big Four, until the new, domed Huntington Bank Field is built up the road in Brook Park.
“It’s very sad,” Michelle Burke, the head of the Ohio Marine Trade Association, the organization that spearheads the annual Boat Show, told Scene in a call.
“There is no facility of this size between Chicago and New York City,” she said. “I mean, if we want to remain competitive, you need a facility of this size.”
For the first time in Burke’s eight years orchestrating the show, which brings boat vendors and buyers together, she’s hosting at the Convention Center downtown, come December.
A move that’s brough big sighs as it has a scaled back operation. Less space means fewer vendors. Less space means a cut to third-party jobs—to decorators, electricians and roofers. (“A fraction of what they were,” she said.) And just a tougher time hauling in product without those massive, hangar-style doors.
“You have to think of this economic loss,” Burke said. “Every one of us Big Four—it’s not just a show, it’s a driver that spurs leads and sales.”
A worry that may have an end come the 2030s, when the Haslam Sports Group plans to finish demolishing its lakefront stadium and opening its shiny new one miles away by Hopkins International. “The major thing is, what do we do for the next three years?” Burke said.
Other Big Four reps, including heads of the Auto Show and the Home & Garden Show, did not respond to calls for comment.
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