Convention Center’s GM Looks Forward To Grand Opening

By Lisa Suhay

W. Courtney Dyer, general manager of the glistening, new Virginia Beach Convention Center, describes himself as “one of those students who tried to squeeze four years of education into seven,” commuting from Virginia Beach to the Old Dominion campus while launching a career with the city of Virginia Beach – and surfing.

That was in the late ’70s when Dyer, now age 50, was the building superintendent for the old Virginia Beach Civic Center. He graduated with a B.S. in business administration in 1980 and went on to become event supervisor, and later, general manager, at the now defunct Virginia Beach Pavilion.

The city’s new $202.5 million convention center, the first phase of which opened Aug. 18, 2005, with the grand opening planned for early 2007, will feature one of the largest ballrooms on the East Coast. Its more than 500,000 gross square feet for meeting and exhibit space is triple the size of the old Pavilion.

Dyer supervises a team of 60 people (including ODU alumni Darcy Myers Potter ’78, event supervisor; Julia Windley Maynor ’97, sales manager; and Katie O’Donnell Glaser ’00, marketing coordinator), who facilitate a wide variety of events and meetings at the center. Upcoming events include the Virginia Beach Antique Show, Aug. 11-13, and the Lifestyles 50+ Expo in October. Recent events have included everything from a meeting of the American Shetland Sheepdog Association to high school graduations.

“We’re like a mall that changes tenants every day,” Dyer said, adding that the new center will allow Virginia Beach to better compete for the lucrative national and regional convention market.

His is a job that pulls you in many directions, often at the same time, but one Dyer said he was prepared for. “When I was studying business at ODU, the drive and juggling coursework with full-time work sharpened me into a great multitasker,” he recalled.

While Dyer was happy when the new center opened, he was equally emotional when the old Pavilion closed, the venue where he had watched members of his family perform: his wife, Linda, a violist with the Virginia Beach Symphony; older daughter, Ashley, now a violin performance major at East Carolina University; and younger daughter, Elizabeth, who also plays violin and dances.

“Believe me, the hardest part of my job was the day they knocked down the old Pavilion where I’d been to countless recitals and performances for my own family.”

Looking back on his studies at Old Dominion, Dyer said he has benefited most from his courses in business law and collective bargaining. “I was most enamored of a 400-level course I took in collective bargaining. The professor had us do a final exam/project where we broke into four groups – two management and two labor – to negotiate a contract.”

Dyer said the reason he can still recount this course 26 years after sitting in class was the unique approach and the way in which it revealed the students’ actual grasp of the material. “The group that came away with the best contract ... got the best grade. Basically, we were bargaining for our grades. It was brilliant – a great way to evaluate the class.”