Compared to the subway creation costs in NYC it is cheap, though lets compare:
stuff owned by the convention center, comparably few legacy costs, no people living there, no running construction
So it is clear NYC is more expensive and they cheaper, comparing newly built subways in China per km in expansion areas (so some without previous housing construction) the cost can be as low as 20$ million per km (in existing cities it is more like 85$ million+ per km).
So they were cheaper than a subway which could transport more than 10 times as many people. However they were more expensive than well constructed subways.
Even more: If they would use underground shuttle services which have capacities above 4400 people per hour, or Trams underground you would look at slightly lower costs even and have more suitable capacities.
Even better fucking passenger conveyor belts like found at airports have 36k people per hour capacity (and saves per mile traveled 10 minutes compared to unrestricted slow walking). So you could've created (not sure about the safety aspect) an underground tunnel where the ground moves you and you would for 2miles travel range take around 10 minutes, which for exhibitions seems to be totally fine.
Compared to the subway creation costs in NYC it is cheap, though lets compare:
So it is clear NYC is more expensive and they cheaper, comparing newly built subways in China per km in expansion areas (so some without previous housing construction) the cost can be as low as 20$ million per km (in existing cities it is more like 85$ million+ per km).
So they were cheaper than a subway which could transport more than 10 times as many people. However they were more expensive than well constructed subways.
Even more: If they would use underground shuttle services which have capacities above 4400 people per hour, or Trams underground you would look at slightly lower costs even and have more suitable capacities.
Even better fucking passenger conveyor belts like found at airports have 36k people per hour capacity (and saves per mile traveled 10 minutes compared to unrestricted slow walking). So you could've created (not sure about the safety aspect) an underground tunnel where the ground moves you and you would for 2miles travel range take around 10 minutes, which for exhibitions seems to be totally fine.
I like how this stupidity makes a 2 mile underground airport conveyor belt look reasonable by comparison
Yeah, this is grade school level shit (the one for young people, not the one for PhDs!)