Just add water

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, February 28, 2004

The Everett Events Center will host its first major trade show this week, when the first-ever Everett Boat Show opens Wednesday for a five-day run.

It’s an important step in the Event Center’s evolution, said Kim Bedier, the arena’s general manager.

"It’s a different event," she said. "It’ll bring in a whole other slew of people than we’ve had before."

The boat show starts at noon Wednesday at the center and runs until 6 p.m. Sunday.

Northwest Washington leads the state in terms of boat ownership, and that makes Everett a natural site for a new boat show, according to the Northwest Marine Trade Association, which is organizing the event.

"The greatest concentration of boats in Washington state is in a tri-county region of Skagit, Whatcom and Snohomish counties," said association president Michael Campbell. The group’s figures show there’s one boat for every nine people in that three-county area, which is almost double the ratio for boat owners in Seattle and King County.

Based on that, and on surveys taken at the Seattle Boat Show in recent years, the group is expecting 10,000 people to attend the Everett show this week.

That would be the biggest crowd to attend an event at the Events Center since it’s opening last year — albeit stretched out over several days. "It’ll be pretty continuous traffic," Bedier said.

Trade shows are an integral part of the Event Center’s planning, she said. They are "every bit as important as a concert or a family show or any other event we have."

The event will bring people downtown for several days running, Bedier said. "They’ll have to eat. They’ll walk by a shop."

The center has hosted smaller wedding and sports car shows, and is negotiating a home show for April, but this week’s boat show will be it’s first big trade event.

The Event Center staff will work through the night tonight to get the facility ready for the first boats, which will arrive Monday morning. The process of "converting" the building will start after tonight’s Silvertips game ends. The staff will lay insulated flooring over the ice in the hockey arena, and in the skating area next door.

Both areas will be covered with boats and displays of boating accessories, Bedier said. The displays will range from "life jackets to boats themselves to any type of accessory that you’d need for your boat, to boat excursions."

More displays will be set up in the building’s concourses and in the main ballroom in the conference center. All of the conference center meeting rooms will be used for seminars.

"They are literally using every square foot of the building," she said. "Every available nook and cranny is going to be boat-related."

Having the events center in Everett allowed the Marine Trade Association to bring a boat show here.

The organization has been working on plans for an Everett boat show for three years. That included doing surveys of people from Snohomish County and farther north who made the drive into Seattle for the boat show there, said John Thorburn, the group’s communications coordinator. "We got some good response from that."

The twice-annual Seattle Boat Show is the biggest on the West Coast, with 500 exhibitors and 1,200 boats, including some major luxury cruisers.

The Everett show, in contrast, will be smaller, and more focused on family boating, Thorburn said. There will be more fishing and skiing boats and runabouts, he said. "You might not find your luxury yacht, your dream-type boats."

About two dozen companies and organizations from Snohomish and Island counties will have displays at the show.

Boat shows are an essential part of being in the business, said Bruce Hawthorn, the owner of Camano Marine.

Anywhere between 50 and 70 percent of a dealer’s business each year is derived from contacts made with customers at boat shows, he said. "What other venue is there out there where people pay to come look at your product?

"It basically sets the table for the year for your business," he continued. "I don’t see how you could survive as a boat dealer without doing boat shows."

Boat shows require a big investment in time and money, and it’s a bit of a risk going to a first-year show such as Everett’s, Hawthorn said.

But "Everett’s ready for a show of there own," he continued. "It’s our backyard. … We’ll see a lot of our customer base there.

"We have every reason in the world to be there, that’s for sure."

Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.