If you’re relatively new to D.C., the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Mt. Vernon Square is all you’ve known. Consider yourself somewhat fortunate.

Today is the celebration of the convention center’s 10th anniversary; it was in 2003 that the new 2,300,000-square-foot, $685 million structure was opened as a replacement to the old Washington Convention Center located only a block away. That center—a hulking concrete behemoth—had opened in 1982 and was finally demolished in December 2004. After it was finally knocked down, it became a large parking lot before making way for CityCenterDC, which is almost complete.

The existing convention center has hosted 1,790 events and welcomed nearly 10 million visitors and residents over the last decade. A new Marriott Marquis is being built across the street, which city officials say will help attract more conventioneers to D.C. Sadly, convention centers tend to have a lifespan of two decades—at the time it was built, some experts said it would outlive its usefulness in 10 years—so we can probably expect that we’ll be building another one of these at some point in the next decade.