Last year seems like “a long time ago,” Russ Vandenberg, general manager of the Seaside Civic and Convention Center, said at last week’s City Council’s meeting.

And during the coronavirus pandemic, this year, so far, seems like it’s been three years in one, he added.

Nevertheless, Vandenberg and Joshua Heineman, the Seaside Visitors Bureau director of tourism marketing, offered an upbeat year in review.

“We haven’t lost anything,” Vandenberg said.

“We’re signing contracts, we’re still signing contracts up to 2030,” he said. “We’re on a 10-year schedule and our books look very good for the future.”

In 2019, the convention center saw 37,700 attendees with $29 million in economic impact on the city, all during a period of eight months under construction.

With completion of construction in April enabling the convention center to hold groups about 20% larger than previously, the center retained groups that had been seeking larger venues, Vandenberg said.

The 70,000-square-foot facility brings 33,500 square feet of rentable meeting room and pre-function space, he said. Remaining footage is used for restrooms, storage, offices and maintenance areas.

“Our goal is to utilize the center to its maximum capacity and to generate economic benefit to our Seaside community,” Vandenberg said. “The second objective is to provide services and facilities that serve the need of civic and local community events.”

The convention center’s recovery will be quicker than most larger facilities in the state, he said.

“We’re able to operate at 250 (attendees) social distancing,” he said. “It’s not the easiest, but larger facilities are going to take a lot longer to recover because their numbers are in the thousands. It could be a long time before we could see numbers of that size gathering in venues again.”

Heineman said the Visitors Bureau continues to grow the local economy by attracting services and visitors to the city.

Last year showed a 3.8% growth, even during the construction period. “The last six months of 2019 were very good and we were on par for a banner year,” he said, until the pandemic hit.

Marketing efforts, while scaled back during the pandemic, “tell a story,” Heineman said, showing the diversity of experiences, shining a light on community events, shaping behavior in overnight stays and “sharing our love of Seaside with visitors.”

While Seaside has been hit hard by the pandemic, Mayor Jay Barber said, “the blessing is we have a new convention center and a visitors bureau that is aggressively getting the word out. Those two tools are going to help us recover.”

Vandenberg mentioned a need for additional storage space in the convention center.

“The project did increase our storage to some extent, but once we purchased additional equipment for the facility, we found we don’t have enough storage,” he said.

Seldom-used bathrooms at the west end of the building will be replaced by a storage area, with a renovation that will add 1,000 square feet of storage area to meet the center’s need. A unisex restroom will replace the current restrooms, in addition to the main restroom areas.

City Council approved a $125,000 request to award the storage contract to O’Brien Construction, the team that performed the renovation.