Exclusive: How Anthro New England Plans to Expand

When Anthro New England had its fourth year in the Westin Boston Seaport Hotel last month, it was obvious to attendees that it had outgrown the space that it occupies. When moving into the Westin in 2023, after being in the Boston Park Plaza hotel for a few years, there were 3,548 attendees. By 2026 they have more than doubled that, to 7,284. All the event space in the Westin had already been contracted out in 2023, and there isn’t additional space to grow in the hotel. Yet the convention needs more of it.

At the end of closing ceremonies, the convention hinted at expansion, telling attendees to wait for an announcement later in the year. Flayrah has been given exclusive information, in a series of interviews, on the plans the convention has for the future of the convention. While not finalized, it gives a glimpse into negotiations and plans often kept hidden from public view by organizers.

Avenues of expansion

With a lack of additional space in the Westin, the convention has to either look nearby or even relocate again. Attendees handily point to the giant convention center next door. The Thomas M. Menino Convention & Exhibition Center, operated by the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority and known as the B.C.E.C., is extremely appealing and straightforward for expansion or replacement. Hell, it’s connected to the Westin with a skybridge. Can’t the convention expand into it? For comparison, Anthrocon was already in the Dudley Lawrence Convention Center in 2016, when it had an attendance of 7,310, according to WikiFur.

While the B.C.E.C. is a lot bigger than the Westin, it’s not a place the convention can expand to soon. RemyGryph, the convention chair from 2021 to 2024, stated that the convention “lightly inquired a few years ago” about acquiring expo space in the B.C.E.C. The quote offered was in the ballpark of “750K to start”. And those were the numbers before the abrupt removal of Remy as a convention chair, which happened under suspicious circumstances and could have delayed expansion plans as the new staff settled in.

The convention projects that it can afford some space in the convention center if the convention grows to at least 10,000 people. As long as the convention keeps growing, which is all but guaranteed, moving in there is the long-term plan. In the intermediate-term, the availability of the convention center and the Westin availability still need to align, whose schedules may be already booked with events a few years in the future.

Two useful spaces are closed for the winter on the Westin property. There’s an outdoor pavilion that the convention has never used. Next to it is The Lawn on D, a park adjacent to the Westin, but operated by the B.C.E.C. While opportune outdoor spaces, they have not been made available due to the timing of the gathering.

Critically, the Westin is not the only hotel in town with event space. All four overflow hotels have their own spaces for events, to some extent. The Aloft, which was the first overflow hotel to be added, has some small conference rooms and two ballrooms. Next door is the Element, but it only has two small meeting rooms, which could be combined into one if needed. In an interview with the co-chairs, Atlas Astral indicated that both of the hotels were entirely booked by ANE’s room block this year. Further of a walk, and in a different direction, is the Renaissance hotel, providing large ballrooms and several conference rooms.

But the prime candidate is someplace new. While never being an overflow hotel, the Omni hotel is right across Summer St. and has both many meeting rooms as well as two large ballrooms. This is the most ideal candidate for expansion, and the convention hopes to grow into it in the short term. This could be a challenging traversal as the city of Boston needs to create an additional crosswalk across Summer St. to allow for furs to cross quickly and safely, regardless. If that venue falls through, the Aloft will be the second choice. Negotiations are ongoing, which occur as part of the annual overflow room block negotiations.

What will actually take residence outside the Westin is far from decided, though. If registration was moved to a separate building, the co-head of registration, Fital Shell, said that it was a possibility and that “nothing is off the table”.

Improving predictions of attendance

The convention is also looking into increasing the gap of early bird pricing and price of attendance closer to when the convention starts to dissuade people from purchasing so late, allowing for sturdier projections. In a survey sent out to attendees earlier this month, one question was to gauge support for this proposal. Furry Weekend Atlanta has done something vaguely similar.

This year, attendance figures were underestimated in part because of increases in day-of registration, which Atlas estimates was around 1,000. “That was kind of, ‘Oh no,’ and also it’s too late to really do anything more than just mitigate what we can at that point,” he said.

Had more people registered earlier, event space in the Aloft might have been added for this year. The convention had expressed an interest in the spaces, even getting a proposal from the hotel, but dropped it as “registration numbers didn’t seem to require it,” Atlas told me.

“We don’t intend to ever not use the Westin in some capacity, but our intention is to eventually move into that convention center, hopefully, and still retain at least some portion of the Westin as, like, a main events and panel room area,” he concluded.

💡 Do you have more insight into Anthro New England’s plans? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device and account, you can message me on Telegram @EberraWolf, or email me at eberrawolf@gmail.com.