The National Rifle Association waited 56 years before bringing its annual convention to Pittsburgh. It waited just three years before deciding to come back.

The NRA convention -- which will bring with it firearms shows, celebrity speakers, gala dinners, more than 60,000 visitors and probably several hundred protesters -- is returning to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center for its 2011 meeting, April 28 through May 1. Its previous Pittsburgh engagement, in 2004, was the NRA's best-attended show, and Pittsburgh's biggest convention.

"They drew a record crowd here in Pittsburgh," said Joseph McGrath. CEO of VisitPittsburgh, formerly the Greater Pittsburgh Convention & Visitors Bureau. Part of that has to do with Pittsburgh's central location, he said -- within a half-day's drive of a quarter of the NRA's 4 million members.

The NRA is taking a second shot at Pittsburgh despite worries, expressed three years ago, that the city might not have enough hotel and banquet space to accommodate another, larger convention. Convention attendees were scattered among many hotels, urban and suburban, some of them shuttled to the convention each day.

But since then, several new hotels have opened in and around Downtown, including a 198-room Marriott SpringHill Suites near PNC Park, a Marriott Courtyard near the convention center and a Hampton Inn and Suites on the Downtown edge of the Strip District.

Other planned hotels include a Residence Inn and a Hyatt Place Hotel, both on the North Shore. And just in the last week, Kratsa Properties announced plans to build a Downtown Hilton Garden Inn at the site of the former Ross Street jail annex, while the SouthSide Works and DOC-Economou announced a deal to build a 140-room hotel.

Both hotels should be open by the 2011 convention.

The NRA's hopes for a larger banquet space could be accommodated by Heinz Field, or, perhaps, the new Pittsburgh Penguins hockey arena, which should be completed by 2011.

The lack of "mega-hotel" space for staff and VIP delegates is still a concern for the NRA, but they've made do in other cities -- Kansas City and Milwaukee previously, and Phoenix in 2009 -- without a huge hotel for conventioneers (Downtown Phoenix, for example, has fewer than 3,000 rooms, compared to 3,653 in Downtown Pittsburgh, Station Square, the North Shore and all points "walkable").

Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, meanwhile, continue to negotiate with Cleveland's Forest City Enterprises over the size of the 400- to 500-room convention hotel, which has been in the drafting stages for six years.

The NRA's return is a nice catch for VisitPittsburgh, which has been working on an encore convention "since the day they left" in 2004, Mr. McGrath said. The 61,000 visitors expected would be more than the 2004 turnout, and comparable to the out-of-town influx for the 2007 U.S. Open in Oakmont and the weeklong Major League Baseball All-Star festivities in 2006.

Unlike the 2004 convention, which arrived in Pittsburgh just as the presidential race between Sen. John F. Kerry and President Bush was heating up, the 2011 version will come the year before a presidential election, at a time when wither the Democrats or Republicans have just started to vet their field of nominees.

That could deprive visitors of the type of politically charged keynote address delivered by Vice President Dick Cheney, who spent part of his time on the dais in 2004 criticizing Mr. Kerry as an anti-gun candidate.

The lack of election-year electricity could also lessen the numbers of protesters who follow the NRA to its conventions. In 2004, the locally formed Confluence Against Gun Violence and the Rosenberg Institute for Peace & Justice organized protests and vigils in memory of gun violence victims.

VisitPittsburgh estimates that the 2011 conference will result in $11.2 million in direct visitor spending and $450,000 in state sales tax revenue, as well as $75,000 in RAD tax revenue (the county's 1 percent sales tax).

Those numbers are speculative, but if nothing else the extra Regional Asset District money will help the Sports & Exhibition Authority plug the annual operating shortfalls at the convention center. In 2008, for example, revenues are pegged at $5.9 million, and convention center expenses are budgeted at $9.8 million.

First Published: December 20, 2007, 5:00 a.m.