Wisconsin Dells Convention Hosting Stage II Outside Traffic

The Village of Lake Delton has given the Kalahari Resort 10 million publicly collected dollars to build a convention center ( 212 thousand square feet) capable of serving large regional - national groups.  This is an effort to attract a huge new population of shared customers in to the Wisconsin Dells area.  The new convention center is being constructed and the community is hoping the facility will be operational within the last quarter of 2019.

The building of the convention center is an after thought to the original resort plan.  The existing amusements being open to the public - are not designed to serve this large new population with the building of the convention center.  This placemaking opportunity is being called a need to reduce amusement burden.

The nearby historic down town Baraboo could benefit from additional pedestrian traffic.  Baraboo is the County Seat for Sauk County which is administering grants for efforts that increase the number of visitors to historic down town Baraboo.  This is placemaking activity that shows a nonlocal population how fun it can be for a family to live, work, and play in Sauk County.

The placemaking process - connecting commercial clusters establishes an area specific online convention hosting industry site that communicates with non-local convention organizers and individual members of a group scheduling a venue in the Wisconsin Dells area. Embedded in the delivery of this information is promotional data that invites convention attendees to schedule a 1 hour visit to historic down town Baraboo as part of their convention stay.

Outside traffic is a modal for demonstrating change in an area being targeted for visitation.  The pictured statue resides on the historic down town Baraboo square.  Several calculations of people walking passed this statue will be recorded prior to the Kalahari Resort Convention Center becoming operational .  This records a base line of calculations.  Once the convention center is operational several calculations of people walking passed this statue is will be recorded for comparison with the baseline.

This is a community building effort designed to support the change being created with the top down investment of public money by the Village of Lake Delton.  This is a mutually beneficial outcome expected to strengthen the local economy while improving the quality of the convention attendees experience.  The Wisconsin Dells area has entered stage II of the convention hosting industry.