Convention Center Delays Could Cost San Diego Millions

It promises to be a boffo premiere for San Diego’s convention center by the bay--one that might even get air play across the nation on “Entertainment Tonight.”

One strains to imagine a more glamorous, more Gucci way for San Diego to plunge into the convention business than with the National Assn. of Television Program Executives--a high-powered, free-spending bunch composed of the honchos of NBC, ABC and CBS, of production companies such as Paramount, MGM, Orion and Lorimar, and TV stations by the score. Trailed by the entertainment press, this group is planning to wheel and deal, to play and party, at the new San Diego Convention Center in February, 1988.

But there’s a problem. Reports from the convention center architects made public in recent days suggest that the center won’t be finished by the time TV’s royalty is supposed to visit.

So the TV group is thinking maybe it should go instead to Houston or Las Vegas--and San Diego would lose its boffo premiere, as well as several other convention dates.

“We bring in over 8,000 people and 200 exhibitors,” Philip Corvo, executive director of the TV executives association, said in a phone interview from his New York office. “I cannot wait for San Diego to make up its damn mind. I need to know what’s going on and I need to know very soon. I can’t tie up 8,000 people on a question mark.”

It still isn’t certain whether the $125-million center will be late in arriving or not, but the possibility of a delay has stirred another round of frustration and anger in San Diego’s ever-controversial effort to build a major convention center. The San Diego Unified Port District and convention center architects are feuding over the demands of their contract.

Doubts about the center’s prospects for hitting the target opening date of late 1987 were expressed in a June 28 letter from the convention center architects to the Port District. The letter stated that a review of the construction process by Dillingham Construction Co. showed that the 20-month construction schedule was “totally unrealistic,” that a 24-month schedule was “achievable at a cost,” and that a 30-month schedule was “optimum.”

Suddenly, although port officials are still shooting for a late 1987 opening, it appeared that a mid-1988 opening seems just as likely. “It’s messy only insofar as the ConVis people (the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau, which is marketing the facility) started bookings in early 1988,” said Bill Rick, chairman of the San Diego Port Commission. “That’s where the blood lies.”

ConVis marketing director Sandra Butler said that in addition to the TV group, seven other conventions that have been confirmed either in writing or orally, along with many other conventions that now have tentative bookings, would go down the drain if there is a 10-month delay in the opening.

Such a delay also would eliminate a gargantuan party to be held by the commissioner of the National Football League in conjunction with the 1988 Super Bowl, slated for San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

To make matters even worse, city officials are saying it also kills off any possibility that San Diego might host the 1988 Republican National Convention.

Using the industry yardstick that estimates that each convention delegate injects $533 into a city’s economy, Butler estimated that the delay could cost San Diego at least $20 million in tourist dollars.

Port officials and their consultants are busy reevaluating the new construction schedule projections, trying to determine whether it is still feasible to get the convention center built on time.

Rick said he believes the port’s best approach right now is to “plow right ahead” with plans to seek bids in late September for a construction schedule that would see the center open in late 1987.

While admitting that attempting to pinpoint a completion date for such a major project is “kind of like trying to legislate the tide,” Rick said he still believes that the competitive bidding process will produce a reputable construction firm that can do the job. Incentives for an early completion and penalties for delays will be incorporated in any contract, he said.

“The judgment is going to be, What is the completion time we specify in the request for bids? But that isn’t going to tell us when the damn thing gets finished,” Rick said. “We could be ridiculous and put down two weeks and the building won’t get done any faster.”

Rick, who owns an engineering firm, and other port officials have expressed skepticism over the way in which the new estimate of a 30-month construction schedule was developed. He described the machinations that produced the estimate as a “really weird deal.”

In fact, the 30-month timetable was not produced by a consultant to the Port District but by Dillingham Construction Co.

Dillingham has been “singularly persistent” in efforts to be named construction manager of the project, according to a July 5 memo to the port commissioners from Port Director Don Nay. Contrary to claims made in Dillingham’s report, the port never solicited a proposal for construction management services, Nay said.

Port officials say they have always maintained that construction management services will be handled sufficiently with the assistance of the architects and the firm of Howard Needles Tammen & Bergendoff of Los Angeles, already hired by the port to consult on the project.

Although port officials have been cool to Dillingham’s overtures, the firm was paid $5,000 by the convention center architects--a team composed of the San Diego firm of Deems Lewis & Partners, Arthur Erickson Architects, and Loschky Marquardt & Nesholm--to conduct the construction timetable study. In developing their 30-month estimate, Dillingham once again proposed that it be hired for about $400,000 as construction manager of the project. In forwarding the estimate to the port commission, Ward Deems, point man of the architectural team, urged that the Port District hire Dillingham.

Deems, in a June 28 letter to port officials, said the port should hire the construction manager because of the complexity of the project and the “tremendous risks at stake for all concerned.”

But port officials maintain that the responsibility for the construction timetable was part of the basic agreement with the architects, and that it should be covered in their costs.

In his letter to port officials, Deems said it was his “understanding” that the completion date of late 1987 was linked largely “to the possibility of obtaining the Super Bowl commitments for San Diego and the related potential use of the center for hosting a major promotional event for that activity.”

Port officials were angered by Deems’ contention. Nay described much of the architect’s statement as “spurious.”

“It should be remembered,” Nay stated in his memo, “that Mr. Deems’ firm was chosen as the winner of the architectural contest in April of 1984, that his contract was executed in July of 1984, that he provided the district with a schedule for the design and construction of the convention center thereafter, and that the Super Bowl was not obtained for San Diego until much later.”

Nay also emphasized that throughout the course of architectural work, Deems’ group provided project schedules that “have been essentially consistent with the 20-month construction period, although there have been minor adjustments and delays which have resulted from some slippage in the earlier work of the architects.”

“If the 20-month construction period is ‘totally unrealistic,’ it is peculiar that this revelation comes so late,” Nay said.

Officials have speculated privately that the architects have fallen behind in their work, and that Deems is hoping both to buy time for the project and to protect their profit margin by persuading the port to bring in Dillingham at the port’s expense.

Deems refused to comment on the controversy.

“That letter was supposed to be for internal use only,” Deems said. “We haven’t even had a chance to meet with the port to decide what should be done.”

The report surfaced, Deems said, because “some people like publicity”--a reference to Commissioner Louis Wolfsheimer, who was the first to air the warnings of the potential delay shortly after the adjournment of a commission meeting on July 2.

Wolfsheimer responded angrily when apprised of Deems comments. “There is no ‘internal use,’ goddamn it. This is the government,” the port commissioner said. “It’s a scandal if we hide things. I don’t want to be part of the government where we’re hiding things.”

Howard Needles Tammen and Bergendoff, the port’s chief consultant on the convention center project, has been asked to review Dillingham’s study. “Any opinions we have we’ll give to the port,” said Bill Love, who heads HNTB’s Los Angeles office.

However, Love said he was not prepared to defend the feasibility of a 20-month construction schedule. “I think our role as a consultant is to take facts as they come in and analyze them,” he said. “The building process is an evolutionary process. You start from a broad decision-making kind of approach . . . and then problems arise in more detail.”

Among the time concerns are the availability of manpower and delivery of materials, Love said.

John E.B. Wilbur, chief engineer for the Port District, said in a report that “the Dillingham study did reveal some potential problems in concrete delivery which would influence the schedule.”

If it is determined that the 20-month construction scheduled is unrealistic, the port commission seems inclined to adopt whatever is determined as the “optimum” schedule. The commission, which initially planned to spend $95 million of public funds to build the facility but later increased the project budget to $125 million, has strongly indicated it will not spend more than that just to get a tighter schedule.

“I don’t think there’s a lot of sentiment to go higher than $125 million, either on the commission or in the public,” Wolfsheimer said. “I think we’ve hit our max.”

However, the budget could still soar beyond $125 million when contractors submit bids in September for the second phase of construction, expected to cost about $100 million. (The first phase, covering excavation, road realignment and site preparation, is under way.) Some critics have said that the $100-million estimate for construction of the parking garage and center itself is unrealistically low.

The panel will have to make difficult decisions if all of the qualified construction bids come in at substantially more than $100 million, Wolfsheimer said.

Apart from ConVis and groups hoping to use the convention center, the possibility of a late opening also is likely to affect business at hotels, as well as commerce at Horton Plaza, Seaport Village and the Gaslamp Quarter.

Still, after years of wondering whether a convention center would be built, business people say they are more encouraged by the fact that the first stage of construction is under way, than discouraged over the potential delay.

“A minor setback” was how Art Skolnick, director of the Gaslamp Quarter Assn., described the possibility of a delay.

“I think the real impact is that the convention center is there, period. Whether it’s delayed nine months or a year is secondary to the fact that it’s going to be there.”

Butler, in charge of marketing the facility, said ConVis representatives have been busy contacting all convention planners with solid or tentative bookings for early 1988. “We just want them to know that their concerns are our concerns,” she said. “We want to maintain credibility in the market.”

Corvo, the director of the TV executives group, suggested that the city itself stands to lose the most if the convention center is not built on schedule.

Having worked as program director for KGTV (Channel 10) in San Diego from 1973 to 1982, Corvo is familiar with the community’s trials and tribulations in trying to build a convention center. Corvo said he has discussed the problem with Dal Watkins, administrative director of ConVis. “Dal is going to cry if he loses this one,” Corvo said.

The TV executives, he said, “stay in the best hotels and spend a lot of money. We have to have the best restaurants and so on . . . In our last meeting (in San Francisco), we had representatives from 38 foreign countries, so it’s almost an international exhibit . . .King World--they distribute ‘Wheel of Fortune’--threw a party that must have cost $150,000 or $200,000 . . . There were 400 press people in attendance.”

Corvo said he has to know by the first week of August whether the San Diego Convention Center will be available for use in February, 1988. And if it’s not going to be ready, there is a good chance that San Diego will never get that particular convention, he said.

“If we don’t make it, I know my board is going to say, don’t go back to San Diego, because we don’t like to deal with cities that play games with us,” Corvo said. “If we lose it, I think we’re gone.”