The International Code Council’s 2025 Annual Conference is Coming to the Newly Renovated Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland

Cleveland, Ohio is home to three major league sports teams and a number of famous actors and recording artists, including Halle Berry, Paul Newman, Kid Cudi, Nine Inch Nails and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.

The city isn’t just where talent is born, however. It has also become a place that attracts talent – and in turn, it has evolved into a destination where sports, music, fandom and business unite.

The Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland is at the heart of it all, serving as the home for a number of notable events, including the 2019 MLB Play Ball Park attended by more than 150,000 fans. The Huntington Convention Center also hosted fan events for the 2018 NCAA Wrestling Championship and the 2022 NBA All-Star game, which celebrated the NBA’s 75th anniversary as a league and brought back the 75 greatest players.

For Travis Poppell, Director of Sales and Marketing at Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland, events don’t get much better than that.

“Where else are you going to see Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson and [all] those guys in one room together?” said Poppell.

In 2024, the Huntington Convention Center hosted the NCAA Women’s Final Four Tourney Town, a fan event that took place during Final Four weekend, as well as the 2024 ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition.

Next up is the biggest and most important event in building safety: the 2025 International Code Council Annual Conference, Expo and Committee Action Hearings which will be held from October 19-30.

Several Renovations, One “Engineering Marvel”

With 500,000+ square feet of meeting and event space – including 225,000 square feet for exhibiting, two ballrooms and 50+ breakout rooms – the Huntington Convention Center is the perfect place to host the Code Council’s 2025 conference. Attendees will be among the first to experience the convention center’s $50 million renovations, which were completed in 2024.

“The Code Council got ahead of the curve by realizing what we were going to become and got in before everybody else,” said Poppell. “[ICC] was one of the first groups to book the new space before the project was even complete.”

The renovations called for a critical update that would transform the building from its initial concept as a medical mall (when it was rated for business occupancy) to meet the standards for assembly occupancy.

Mike Campo, General Manager at Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland, said that the occupancy change required the installation of a “monumental” staircase to increase capacity.

“We had to widen two of our stairwells to accommodate the higher occupancy,” said Campo. “[We also] had to essentially double our restroom capacity throughout.”

The most expensive part of the expansion involved the 10,000 square foot ballroom. The Huntington Convention Center wanted to increase its size by nearly double. In order to accomplish this task, construction crews had to cut the ballroom’s existing five columns and push out an additional 10,000 square feet.

“[It] was a little bit of an engineering marvel, but it all of it got done in under 18 months,” Campo added.

The Huntington Convention Center was originally built in 2013, so it benefited from some of the more modern building codes, as well as the ADA standards. There were still challenges to overcome with a new occupancy classification, including HVAC adjustments, but the challenges seem like old news whenever people visit the site.

From the newly renovated Atrium Ballroom to the rooftop terrace and luxury hospitality suites, the Huntington Convention Center was built to serve a wide variety of events.

“There was a lot of natural light throughout the building, and in the convention world, that’s a home run,” Campo said of the renovated building. “When we do site visits with clients now and they see all the natural light, they love it.”

Sustainable Features

The Huntington Convention Center was built and renovated with sustainability in mind. Every year, the convention center repurposes food scraps to feed animals and transforms excess waste into renewable energy and fertilizer. This is an efficient way to utilize unused food and prevents thousands of pounds of food waste from entering landfills.

Better still, the Huntington Convention Center has its own 19,000 square foot, LEED Gold farm (known as The Real Farmville) that supplies honey, eggs, vegetables, herbs and seasonal flowers to the convention center.

“Our green roof helps divert water runoff because it gets trapped like a sponge in the soil and evaporates,” said Campo. “That is a huge natural design element that really helps our sustainability. We also donate several hundred thousand pounds of food waste annually to local shelters and we work with our food and beverage provider to help execute that.”

Attend, Connect, Learn and Give Back

Those who attend the 2025 Code Council Annual Conference, Expo and Committee Action Hearings will discover a world-class venue as they connect with and learn alongside other building safety professionals. The event officially kicks off on Sunday, October 19, but attendees can participate a day early on October 18 to support the 2025 Annual WICED-PTN-ICC Day of Service.

The 11th annual Day of Service is a collaborative effort between the Code Council, Women in Code Enforcement and Development (WICED) and PermitTechNation (PTN) to give back to the community. This year’s event supports the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Northeast Ohio (RMHC), and volunteers will earn 0.70 PP Continuing Education Units (CEUs).

Attendees will also have the chance to earn CEUs throughout the event, including the Opening Session on October 20, which will feature a keynote by generational communication expert Kristin Scroggin. Attendees can earn up to 1.0 CEUs by attending/participating in the Group B #2 Committee Action Hearings, which begin on October 22.

The 2025 Code Council Annual Conference, Expo and Committee Action Hearings kick off on October 19 and run through October 30. Learn more here.