Reservations Voiced Over Convention Center Delays

Bruce Evans had a question.

The executive director of the 1,200-member California Rental Assn. had listened for 90 minutes Saturday morning as civic leaders extolled the glories of San Diego.

He had heard Mayor Roger Hedgecock promise that the new San Diego Convention Center would “mark what convention centers will be like in the next 100 years.”

Polishing off a breakfast of crab-meat crepes in pastry shells and fresh mango with strawberry sauce at the Westgate Hotel, Evans had listened intently as architect Jim Purcell described the planning for the bay-front convention center in minute detail.

Finally, Evans got a chance to ask his question.

“Some of us out here are a little nervous at this point,” he said, as about 75 convention planners, trade magazine reporters and their spouses swiveled to listen. “A couple of years back we booked large conventions in San Diego, and now we’re disturbed to find that the planning is still going on, that construction hasn’t started yet.

“What’s your best estimate,” Evans asked, “as to when it will be finished?”

Purcell did not give Evans the answer he wanted to hear.

“It will definitely be finished in the year 1988,” Purcell said, backing off without a blink from the long-promised target date of late 1987.

As for when in 1988 the $125-million project would be completed, Purcell said simply, “A lot of that will depend upon the strategies used.”

For Evans and the other convention planners from throughout the nation being wined and dined for the weekend by the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau, the uncertainty means San Diego cannot be seriously considered as a major convention destination until 1989 or 1990.

That timetable posed no problem for several convention organizers interviewed Saturday during their whirlwind visit. They said they simply looked forward to bringing their groups here when the center is ready.

But Evans could not afford to be so sanguine. He said he had all but decided to cancel the rental association’s plans to bring its 6,000- to 7,000-person convention to the new center in October, 1988.

“It’s going to be a little too tight to plan,” he sighed. “I think I’m going to have to move it out.”

Port district, convention center and tourism officials have heard other convention planners voice similar frustrations. But they remained unswervingly upbeat Saturday as they laid down the welcome mat for visitors whose good impressions of San Diego could bring 168,000 convention delegates to town.

“We’re going to have--very close to our schedule--the finest convention center that can be created in America today,” said William Rick, chairman of the Port Commission.

Tom Liegler, the recently hired general manager of the center, pledged no less than twice that the new facility would be “world class,” adding that it would operate “in a very, very first-class manner.”

Sue Stephens Cox, president of ConVis, told the convention organizers of developers’ plans to build several hotels near the convention center--plans considered essential if the city is to be able to house delegates for large meetings.

The Westin Symphony Towers hotel has been announced, she said, the Omni International is “coming up,” the waterfront Hotel Inter-Continental expects to add a twin tower, and nearby, ground is to be broken soon on a Hyatt.

Cox did not note that some of those projects, notably developer Doug Manchester’s plans for two hotels near his existing Inter-Continental tower, have been beset with financial uncertainties.

But the visitors supplied their own skepticism after a tour of the U.S. Grant Hotel, under renovation downtown, which Cox had told them was expected to open Dec. 1. The hotel lobby was crowded with scaffolding, the dry wall was unfinished, and the guests had to don hard hats to go inside.

“That hotel we just saw made people a little queasy,” said Sylvia Tiersten, a reporter for Association and Society Manager magazine.

However, her companion on a walk through Horton Plaza, Les Barry of Meetings and Conventions magazine, warned against concluding that convention planners would be put off by the loose ends in an otherwise impressive tapestry woven by the convention center’s boosters.

Most of the planners are booking conventions for 1992, he said, so to them it makes little difference whether the Grant is finished this year or if the convention center’s opening is delayed from 1987 to 1988.

“I don’t think anybody paid any attention to the initial announcement,” Barry said. “Nobody knows it’s been delayed.”

In fact, several of the planners said they were not fazed by the lack of a certain opening date for the convention center. “I feel we’ll be here in 1991,” said David Clemmons, assistant convention manager for the American Red Cross.

And even Evans said his love for San Diego was not diminished by the likelihood that he would spend the coming weeks scrambling to find another meeting site for his group of equipment and vehicle rental companies.

“If we don’t come to San Diego in 1988, we’ll be back here as soon as we can,” he said.