The team at the award-winning Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC) have good reason to celebrate today (Jun 22) – it’s exactly one year ago that the Melbourne Convention Centre was declared officially open for business by Victorian Premier John Brumby.

Since its opening, the centre has been presented with some of the industry’s highest and most important global accolades and awards for its exceptional environmental and design features; construction and development; imaginative catering and service excellence.

The Melbourne Convention Centre today (Jun 22)
celebrates its first birthday 

Built from the ground up with the environment top-of-mind, the convention centre opened as the first, and still is the only ‘6 Star Green Star’ environmentally rated convention centre in the world, blending seamlessly with the Melbourne Exhibition Centre to create the largest and most versatile convention and exhibition centre in the Southern Hemisphere.

Over the past 12 months the venue has hosted 851,211 delegates from 850 events including the world’s largest interfaith gathering, the Parliament of the World’s Religions; the inaugural Healthy Parks, Healthy People World Congress; the International Conference on Synchrotron Radiation Instrumentation; the World Congress in Internal Medicine 2010; and Australia’s most prestigious environmental awards, the Banksia Foundation Awards.

There are currently 63 international business events confirmed for the centre, which will attract more than 117,500 delegates to the city and state, and inject AUD659.2 million into the Victorian economy.

“On behalf of the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Trust I would especially like to congratulate the team at the MCEC on this important milestone,” said MCEC chief executive Leigh Harry.

“I’d also like to congratulate the designers Joint Venture Architects Woods Bagot and NH Architecture, the developers Plenary Group, the builders Brookfield Multiplex, the State Government of Victoria, and the City of Melbourne. The collaborative vision was to successfully create and deliver a world-class convention and exhibition centre which would bring significant economic benefits to Melbourne and Victoria and that is exactly what we did,” he said.

“Our city now has one of the most architecturally stunning and environmentally savvy convention and exhibition centres in the world – surrounded by everything that depicts Melbourne; restaurants, cafes, bars and shopping. It really is an outstanding asset for the city and state.”