Items tagged with 'Albany convention center'

Hudson Valley Gamer Con

Albany Capital Center exterior v2

Video games are now being treated like sports. Colleges are fielding teams. And some of those teams will be at the Albany Capital Center March 30-31 for a new event called the Hudson Valley Gamer Con, which is being billed as the "largest Northeast collegiate esports event to-date." Blurbage:

This event has plans to highlight the Capital Region as a destination for gamers, esport fans and software developers alike. The conference and expo will feature seating for more than 800 guests to watch the ECAC esports Championships featuring three popular game titles including League of Legends and Overwatch. A third title will be revealed in the coming months. ...
Additionally, there will be an expo that caters to the regional gaming and esports community, featuring up to 50 vendors. The expo has plans to showcase regional game development studios, Empire State Development's Digital Game Hubs at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and New York University, college programs focused on games and esports, local artists, independent developers and other esports lifestyle brands. Portions of the expo will feature hands-on gameplay and retail vendors.

Sixteen colleges are currently set to compete at the event.

Esports -- essentially people playing video games in organized competitions -- have become big business and are drawing a huge amounts of attention. An event last year in Poland drew more than 170,000 people and 46 million unique online viewers. And many American colleges and universities field esports teams, some of them even offer scholarships.

A star Fortnite player who goes by the name Ninja is on the cover of ESPN The Magazine this month.

Tickets for Hudson Valley Gamer Con are $24 per day / $14 per day for students and available online.

The Albany All Stars Roller Derby opens its home season this weekend

Albany All Stars at ACC 2017

The Albany All Stars Roller Derby 2018 season opens this Saturday, April 28. The All Stars will be back at the Albany Capital Center to take on the Suburbia Roller Derby Suburban Brawl from Yonkers.

Tickets are $12 ahead / $15 day of / kids 10 and under are $5. First whistle is at 7 pm.

Last season was the roller derby's first at the new convention center. It makes use of the big multi-purpose space on the second floor. (The one with the LED ceiling.) There's food, a bar, music, and halftime activities.

The All Stars have seven home games this season -- one a month through October. Season passes start at $75.

Hellions of Troy
The Hellions of Troy started up their new season in March at the Rollarama in Rotterdam. They're next in action at home May 19 against Suburbia Roller Derby. Tickets are $10 ahead / $12 at the door / kids 12 and under are $3.

Empire State Comic Con at Albany Capital Center

Albany Capital Center

The Empire State Comic Con will be at the Albany Capital Center this weekend, Friday though Sunday. Single-day tickets start at $20 ($5 for kids), and three-day passes are $55 / $20 for kids ($60 / $22 day of).

It looks like the event all includes all the typical comic con fare, including comics artists, cosplay, talks, and panels.

There will also be a lineup of actors and other special guests, including:
+ Robert Englund, who played Freddy Krueger
+ Ryan Hurst from Sons of Anarchy
+ Cara Buono, who plays Karen Wheeler on Stranger Things (she was appeared on Mad Men)
+ Lou Ferrigno, who played The Hulk on TV back in the day

The con starts runs 3-9 pm on Friday, 10 am-7 pm on Saturday, and 10 am-5 pm on Sunday.

The Albany Capital Center is hosting concerts now

musician Ashanti

Ashanti. / photo via Ashanti Facebook

So the Albany Capital Center is a concert venue now, too. A trio of shows that are coming up in the next month...

February 14: An Intimate night w/ Ashanti on Valentine's Day
It's "seated general admission event" with the R&B star. 7 pm -- $40 and up

February 23: Empire State Fest 2k18 featuring Jay Critch and Blak Ryno
Hip hop. 9 pm -- $25

February 25: Dropkick Murphys
A general admission floor show with the Celtic punk band. 6:30 pm -- $35
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That's in addition to the usual convention center-type events such as conferences, expos, and group meetings.

Over at the Biz Review, Mike DeMasi looked at the 139 events the ACC hosted during 2017 -- 27 were events new to Albany County. (The convention center opened in March 2017.)

Earlier:
+ Gawking at the Albany Capital Center
+ Albany All Stars Roller Derby has a new home

Roller derby night at the ACC

Albany_All_Stars_at_ACC_3.jpg

A quick pic follow-up to that post about the Albany All Stars moving their games to the Albany Capital Center. That's a pic above from the season opener Saturday night, in which the All Stars lost to Port City. Here are a few more in large format.

The roller derby was in the large multi-purpose space on the second floor of the new convention center. The track was on a hard surface laid atop the carpet there, with spectator seating on two sides, the benches on another, and the announcers and scoreboard along the other.

It looked like there might be a few kinks to work out for using the space. During halftime members of the crowd helped push the interlocking pieces of the track surface back together. And if it's possible to get more elevated seating in there, it'd probably help sight lines. (There was a good crowd Saturday night -- pretty much all the seating was filled.) But it was the first night and anything new is going to have a learning curve.

AASRD has a game a month at the ACC through October. The next one is May 6.

Albany All Stars Roller Derby has a new home

Albany Capital Center multipurpose space basketball court

At the Albany Capital Center ribbon cutting, there was a full-size basketball court set up in the center's big multi-purpose space to show off both the size of the room and its ability to host sporting facilities.

Updated Thursday morning.

The Albany All Stars Roller Derby launches into its 10th season April 15 -- at.a new home.

The All Stars are moving to the new Albany Capital Center.

"It's a huge, beautiful space and we're very excited," said Kimberly Eisen, AKA "Dottie Damage."

(there's more)

The ceiling is moving

albany capital center ballroom ceiling LED gif

Here's a bonus track from yesterday's Albany Capital Center photo tour.

The second floor of the venue includes a huge ballroom/multi-purpose space -- 22,500 square feet with a 26-foot ceiling and no support columns. And it takes a second to process that you're in such an enormous, uninterrupted indoor space.

Anyway, the feel of the room further amplified by the LED lights that stud the ceiling. They can be programmable to change into millions of different colors while creating patterns that twinkle or move.

That's what the gif above is showing, a pattern from Wednesday that evokes a flapping American flag. It's kind of mesmerizing. (And it really weirds out the autofocus on a phone camera.)

Here's a longer (but still short) video clip if you'd like to zone out a bit more...

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Gawking at the Albany Capital Center

Albany Capital Center exterior

The new convention center in downtown Albany -- the Albany Capital Center -- officially opened Wednesday.

The $78 million project on Eagle Street has been in the works for a long time, stretching back to an earlier, larger plan at a site on the southern edge of downtown.

The idea is for the new convention center -- at the spot on Eagle -- is to provide a tourism boost not just on its own, but in conjunction with the TU Center and Empire State Plaza, to which it's connected to both by an enclosed walkway.

Here's a look around the new venue, along with a few details...

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Albany Capital Center construction tour

Albany Capital Center construction exterior 2016-October

The Albany Capital Center doesn't open until next March, but the structure of the new convention center has taken shape and, from the exterior at least, it's starting to look like it's finished form.

The road to this point has been a long one, stretching back years. And it didn't event start at this site on Eagle Street -- the first proposed spot, for a much larger project, was on the south side of downtown.

So, we're curious to see how this is all going to turn out. (And we suspect you are, too.) Toward that end, we got a chance to tour the construction site this week.

Let's have a look...

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They put a tree atop the new Albany convention center building... why?

The Albany Capital Center isn't set to open until March of next year, but officials celebrated the completion of the structural framework of the new convention center in downtown Albany Tuesday with a "topping off" ceremony in which the final steel beam was lifted to the top. And on that beam were an evergreen tree and an American flag.

You might have noticed this sort of ceremony (also known as "topping out") at other local projects -- the Rivers Casino project had one back in April.

So... what's with the tree?

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A virtual spin around the Albany Capital Center

The short clip embedded above is a new promo video for the Albany Capital Center, which is under construction at Eagle and Howard streets. It includes a handful of interior renderings of the convention center that we hadn't seen, yet. (The renderings start around the :45 mark.)

That LED ceiling in the second floor multipurpose space looks like it could be groovy.

The Albany Capital Center is scheduled for an early 2017 opening.

Watching the convention center bit by bit

The Albany Capital Center -- AKA, the not-yet-built convention center in downtown Albany -- unveiled a new website today. The site is smooth, and it includes bits such as floor plans.

One of the things that caught our eye is an ongoing time lapse video of the site from above. (We're always a sucker for stuff like that.) The current version is embedded above. The site says the time lapse will be updated monthly.

(By the way: To us, the video looked best when set to 720p on half speed -- click the little gear icon in the Youtube control bar to change the settings.)

Albany Capital Center rendering

Albany_Capital_Center_rendering_2014-August_cropped.jpg

At Howard (to the left) and Eagle (to the right).

Now that the old Wellington Hotel annex is gone (and how), here's the latest rendering of the Albany Capital Center. The Albany Convention Center Authority released this image on Friday. Here's a larger version.

An architect for the firm designing the center told the Times Union the project's brick facade is intended to fit with the former DeWitt Clinton Hotel across Howard Street. The DeWitt Clinton is itself going through a major renovation to become the "Renaissance Hotel."

That whole 2-3 block area of downtown Albany is set for a major transformation. In addition to the Albany Capital Center and DeWitt Clinton projects, there's also a plan for mixed-use buildings behind the currently empty Wellington facade along State Street. Also proposed for that block: a new 337-space parking garage off Howard Street, for which Columbia Development is seeking $1.2 million via the state Regional Economic Development Council (the rendering above appears to include a glimpse of the garage).

The Wellington Hotel annex implosion

Updated Monday morning.

The old Wellington Hotel annex in downtown Albany was imploded Saturday morning to make way for the new convention center. A video clip is embedded above.

There were probably a few thousand people gathered on the Empire State Plaza, along with others in a few other spots around downtown. The were some on-building fireworks. A few loud booms. A slight pause. The building collapsed. Cheering. And then lots of dust.

After the jump, a collection of tweets, instagrams, and pics...

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Wellington annex implosion road closures (updated)

wellington annex albany convention center site 2015-05-15

Soon to go boom.

Update: The implosion has been moved to Saturday, August 23. The information below has been updated.
____

The city of Albany has given to the OK to the implosion of the Wellington annex building in downtown Albany for this Thursday, August 21 Saturday, August 23. The big boom is apparently going to happen sometime in the morning.

The implosion has prompted of a bunch of road closures (for cars and pedestrians) and parking restrictions for that day. There's a list and a map after the jump.

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Quick updates on Park South redevelopment and Albany convention center

albany convention center site 2015-05-15

As the sign says: "Future Home of The Albany Capital Center."

Two quick updates on two big projects in Albany: Both the Park South redevelopment project and the Albany convention center project got approval from the city planning board Thursday night for their demolition plans.

The approvals moves both a bit closer to actual construction -- because it moves them closer to knocking down what's currently there.

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Cuomo admin has OK'ed Albany convention center

proposed Albany convention center Eagle and Howard 2013-11-25

A rendering for the Eagle Street side.

Updated

So, this is news: "A government official involved in the project's negotiations" tells the Biz Review's Adam Sichko that the Cuomo administration has approved the scaled-down version of the Albany convention center. That's a big deal because buy-in from the Cuomo admin would open the way for the release of about $70 million in money that's already allocated/promised/set aside for a convention center project.

The new scaled-down plan was introduced in November. It would site a 82,000-square-foot facility at Howard and Eagle in downtown Albany. The Albany Convention Center Authority has touted the new plan -- about a third the size of the of the originally proposed project -- as a "hub" between the Empire State Plaza and the Times Union Center, with all three connected by a covered walkway.

The ACCA said the $66.5 million project could be paid for with the already-allocated money. It estimated that it could be completed by July 2016.

The Cuomo administration confirmed the approval in a press release later on Tuesday. The release included a name for the facility -- "Albany Capital Center" -- and a start date for construction -- June 2014.

Oh, and there's important bit tucked into the administration's announcement:

Furthermore, the land accumulated by the Authority for the first proposed location would be conveyed to the Office of General Services (OGS) and would be made available for appropriate development through a Request for Proposal managed by OGS and Empire State Development (ESD), with the goals of expanding the local commercial tax base and the creation of jobs and opportunities

That land is the chunk on the south side of downtown Albany near the bus station. Earlier this year an idea was floated for the land to be used for an aquarium/science center/something or other. The fact that the state will directly controlling the land prompts a lot of questions -- including what state officials consider "appropriate development" for the site.

Earlier on AOA: Renderings, a footprint map, and more details about the new convention center proposal

image: ACCA/CHA

The proposed -- and scaled-down -- Albany convention center

proposed Albany convention center Eagle and Howard 2013-11-25

A rendering for the Eagle Street side. That entrance is style is called a "porte-cochère." / image: ACCA/CHA

The Albany Convention Center Authority revealed a bit more about the revised plan to build a scaled-down, $66.5 million convention center at Eagle and Howard streets in downtown Albany. An ACCA slide deck about the project is embedded after the jump -- it includes some renderings and details. Also there: an clickable map with estimated building print.

This new plan replaces the original proposal for much larger facility on the southern end of downtown Albany. That plan fizzled over the last few years under concerns about cost and whether the project could float financially over the long term.

The authority is touting the new project -- about a third the size of the of the other project -- as a "hub" between the Empire State Plaza and the Times Union Center, with all three connected by a covered walkway and 2) feasible under the approximately $70 million already allocated/promised/set aside for the original convention center. It projects a timeline that includes a possible completion date of July 2016.

There are still a handful of questions and uncertainties about the project. This article from the Biz Review's Mike DeMasi covers a lot of them, along with other details about the project.

And what of the south side downtown land gathered for the original project? JCE reported in the TU today that the authority is planing to issue a request for proposals for a mixed-use project on the site.

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The Scoop

For a decade All Over Albany was a place for interested and interesting people in New York's Capital Region. It was kind of like having a smart, savvy friend who could help you find out what's up. AOA stopped publishing at the end of 2018.

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