In the wake of last fall’s failed bid to get voters to approve a sales tax hike for a $60 million event center complex, city officials faced the unsavory prospect of sinking millions into the aging Two Rivers Convention Center just to maintain its status as a money loser.

They had already lowered the city’s subsidy of the operation by striking a deal with a private vendor to manage the facility. It was a smart move because it capped the city’s losses and even set the stage for a profit-sharing arrangement if the vendor can ever nudge the operation into the black.

But the outdated facility doesn’t have the event space to attract the kind of conventions – in scale or number -needed push the convention center toward profitability and turn it into the kind economic powerhouse the ballot measure imagined.

That will change if the City Council and the Downtown Development Authority agree to a public-private partnership that will provide the infusion of capital needed to give the facility a facelift and add event space in the form of a junior ballroom in an adjoining hotel.

Read more at The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.